


Spilling Like An Overflowing Sink

by PastelClark



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Body Dysphoria, Cancer, Family, Family Dynamics, Fluff and Angst, Gender nonconforming character, Genderqueer Lance, Grief/Mourning, Implied/Referenced Self-Harm, M/M, Platonic Relationships, Questionable but Lovable Role Model(s), Reptile Thievery, Somehow?? Still Canon Compliant??, Unhealthy Coping Mechanisms, basically Lance likes skirts and has no concept of gender norms, basically a Lance backstory honestly, in which Lance has a large family in danger of falling apart, klance, lowkey suicidal tendencies, youngest sibling Lance
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-09-23
Updated: 2017-12-30
Packaged: 2018-08-16 16:27:42
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 11
Words: 53,881
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8109445
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/PastelClark/pseuds/PastelClark
Summary: Lance Alexander Rafael McClain is born in the middle of a summer storm, thunder cracking and rain slamming onto the roof of an old ramshackle house that had seen more than its fair share of children. The miracle baby, that’s what the family had called Lance. The unexpected son to a mother of five daughters.(In which family is always complicated, Lance's life hasn't been all sunshine and rainbows, and he and Keith are really emotionally constipated for each other.)





	1. Lightheart

**Author's Note:**

> Voltron was a mistake and I regret everything.
> 
> (fic title taken from Halsey's Colors because I'm trash obviously.)
> 
>  
> 
>  **EDIT 3/23/17: Content Disclaimer** (Fun I know).
> 
> Since I don't feel I can accurately cover things in the tags, let me leave for you here a little notice about the contents of this fic--  
> SLAOS deals heavily with grief & mourning, and does feature character death (admittedly, it's not a canon character, but it's still a death), as well as unhealthy coping mechanisms abound. There are pointed references to self-harm, depression, and semi-suicidal thoughts and behaviors. I won't get into everything here, but I'd suggest checking my notes before each chapter if you have specific triggers to look out for, as I'll make explicit note if there's something in the chapter that may bother specific people.
> 
> Other important things to keep in mind in regards to this fic: 
> 
> -Lance is portrayed as genderqueer with (some) feminine leanings. He is strongly implied in portions of the story to be nonbinary and/or genderfluid. 
> 
> -Lance is first-generation Cuban-American here. His mother is Cuban, and his father is mixed Cuban/Israeli, if those specifics are of importance to you. (I started this fic before the Cuban Lance announcement dropped and just rolled with it)
> 
> -Hunk is mixed Maori/Samoan (Again: Before the Samoan Hunk announcement)
> 
> -I like killing off characters?? This isn't a happy story?? Go?? Read something else??

Lance Alexander Rafael McClain is born in the middle of a summer storm, thunder cracking and rain slamming onto the roof of an old ramshackle house that had seen more than its fair share of children, a home birth on a spread of old sheets in the living room because he came a month and a half early (in a rush before his time as always, his mother said), and between the unexpectedness and the storm there wasn’t time for the hospital, only for the midwife the next street over.

 

Not that it mattered, his mother told him years later as she dusted that same living room—she’d already had five children, what was a sixth? Lance is the third child to be delivered there in that home, after his mother’s youngest sister and his oldest aunt’s first child, born to a woman who had her first child at twenty and her final at thirty-nine.

 

The miracle baby, that’s what the family had called Lance. The unexpected son to a mother of five daughters, who had discovered she was pregnant two weeks after her husband flipped his car off the highway railing coming home from the horses, a gambling man with a propensity for losing till his last breath. His parting gifts to his widow one last child and a mountain of debt held in the hands of loan sharks and debt collectors.

 

Maria Sanchez-McClain is many things, and while she loved her husband despite his many faults, she is no fool and not prone to fantasy. She goes back to her two jobs six weeks after Lance is born, entrusting him to the care of his older sisters and aging grandmother. There are bills to pay and rent to meet, and with fifteen mouths to feed crammed into that old, falling-apart house, every penny counts.

 

And so it goes.

 

 

xxx

 

 

Loraine, Lance’s youngest older sister, primarily raises him. She is eight when he is born, and often alone in a house where she is the youngest, aside from Lance, by far. In the early morning, the house is all bluster and crowded noise, but one by one, their mother, two aunts and uncle, grandfather, two older cousins, and oldest two sisters leave for work, and the two remaining sisters and youngest cousin for high school, leaving Lance with his grandmother. And Loraine, first home by a period of hours from elementary school with nothing to do and no company, attaches herself to Lance with vicious dedication. It’s not like it’s new in their family—raising a child is a shared job between parents, aunts, siblings, cousins, whoever’s older. They are as a whole a close-knit bundle intent on survival in a world that’d like to eat them alive, and so there are no divisions between families. Lance’s aunts and uncle are as much esteemed parental figures to him as his mother is, and the ones who truly raise him, who teach him how to read and swim and ride his bike when Mamá is out working days at the bookshop and nights at the diner, are his sisters.

 

He grows up learning the art of femininity. While his two older male cousins see fit to offer to teach him "men’s things" as he grows, he rarely takes them up on the suggestion. While he loves Carlos and Lucas very much, if he needs to learn how to use a drill or change a bike tire, he’ll ask Igraine, who can fix anything with a gear with nothing but a box of tools and steely fire. She’s the third oldest sibling, a true middle child in her quest to carve herself out as an individual, and she teaches Lance how to fix a car motor at age seven and how to shoot a paintball gun, the same paintball gun she obsessed and slaved over her meager wages at a part-time job for in high school, at age ten. He’s a natural shot, just like her.

 

Marcie, who prides herself on being oldest and is already coming up on twenty when Lance is born, shows him how to be beautiful. She teaches him the tricks of color, of light, of hair, and dress, and makeup, and by the time he’s eight he knows more about skin care than the average woman in her thirties, much to the amazement of the women of the beauty parlor where Marcie works when she brings him in periodically to show him off. He grows up spending some of his favorite afternoons there, perched on the counter and idly gossiping with the clients as Marcie cuts their hair, putting away Marcie’s tools as she hands them to him with the glittery pink-painted nails Marcie did for him the night before.

 

He learns to fight from Karen, the first in their family to make it to college with a lucky soccer scholarship to get her there. She teaches him the art of the ball as she simultaneously teaches him to take no shit and no prisoners, and to never, _ever_ let anyone talk down to him because of who his family is and where they come from. He’s nine when he first gets the ball past Karen and into the goal, and she rewards him by teaching him how to properly throw a punch.

 

That lesson Lance takes to heart when he kicks the living daylights out of a kid who talks shit about Evie, the youngest of their little huddle after Loraine and himself, at age ten. Evie is a genius with a mind for computers like no other, hindered only by her social anxiety and stutter that kept her from college when she was too frightened to go in for an interview, and bound her to working from home for a software company, and he tells as much to the principal when he gets yanked in during the aftermath of the fight. It doesn’t matter anyways, he gets suspended and has to apologize to the same _hijo de puta_ who started it, because the other boy comes from a nice middle class family, and Lance is the miracle baby of a family of working-class immigrants still paying off his father’s gambling debts a decade after he died. It’s not fair, and Evie tells him so when she stammers out her thanks for defending her when he returns home that afternoon, but it’s the way the world works.

 

And then there is Loraine.

 

Loraine, who is the one there to paint Lance’s nails for him when Marcie is busy and to play with him once Karen leaves for college. Loraine, who dries his tears and reads to him and holds him when no one else can. They are the spitting image of one another, with the same shade of tanned skin and dark, slightly wavy hair, and bright blue eyes, the only ones in the whole family with those surprise light eyes in sharp contrast to everyone else’s dark brown, and growing up Lance wants nothing more than to be like her. He chooses her hand-me-downs over the old clothes of Lucas and Carlos’s his aunt digs up for him over the years, dressing proudly in her old pink shorts and faded NASA shirts, and growing his hair out when she stops cutting hers. They braid each other’s dark curls into short tails under the glow star stickers on the ceiling of their shared room and watch scifi movies on school nights—Loraine is obsessed with space, with the stars and their mysteries, and so Lance is too, and once he’s old enough to walk the journey on his own, Loraine takes him out on the walk to the hill at the park every night each summer, telescope hoisted over her shoulder as Lance clumsily insists on carrying her camera bag.

 

Loraine is going to be a pilot, she tells him on a balmy summer night when he is eight and she is sixteen, Garrison Academy application forms clutched between her hands like a dirty secret. There’s scholarships, but the Garrison keeps cadets in training until they are at least twenty, charging tuition rather than paying salary, and getting a pilot’s job with any sort of prestige is extremely competitive, but Loraine is the most incredible person in the world in eight-year-old Lance’s eyes, so when she whispers her fears out into the night air and to the stars, Lance clings desperately to her and tells her again and again that if anyone can do it, it’s her.

 

That same summer is when one Hunk Garrett moves into the small cottage-house down the road with his grandmother and dog. There’s only four houses on their old dirt road of a street, and the other two with families whose children have long since moved out, and so Lance watches curiously as the first child his age on the street moves in. He and Loraine, bored and with little to do, spend the first couple days of Hunk’s arrival spying on the tiny household, sitting up on the lowest part of their roof with an old pair of binoculars that belong to their uncle that they pass back and forth, peering in to the lives of the fresh meat and eating apples stolen from the tree that hangs over the fence from the neighbor’s yard. Igraine, who has long since escaped high school and works her days at the mechanic’s with their uncle, shakes her head as she comes home each late afternoon, calling them snoops from the front yard as he and Loraine pelt her with apple cores in response.

 

After a week, Lance speaks to Hunk for the first time. Or, more accurately, Hunk speaks upwards at him from where he is perched in the wide oak tree at the park, chipping little stars into the bark as Loraine sits and works on her Garrison application on a bench nearby.

 

“I like your hair.” Is the first thing he hears, called up to him from the ground, and peering down, he is rewarded with the sight of the object of his observation for the last few days in the form of one slightly taller, heavier-set (at least, in comparison to Lance, who’s as much a stick as Loraine and Evie are) boy with dark hair and overgrown bangs that hang in his eyes. Lance, who’s never had much luck with making friends at school but has been taught that confidence and friendliness are the key to successful interactions, makes his way down carefully, grimacing when his skirt, a light blue old thing that was once Evie’s gets caught on a branch and he has to yank it free. Dropping down, he utters a cautious thanks, watching the other carefully.

 

“I’m Hunk.” The boy in front of him says, sticking out his hand nervously.

 

 _I know_ , Lance wants to say, but he swallows it down in the face of looking odd and instead takes the offered hand. “Lance.”

 

Hunk blinks, eyes flickering between Lance’s mess of hair that falls just past his shoulders, his skirt and faded t-shirt, and bare feet in slight surprise. “Sorry, this is going to sound weird but I don’t want to get it wrong? Are you…a boy or a girl? Or neither? I can’t—“

 

“I’m Lance,” Lance says, shrugging, because it’s never been more complicated for him than that. He likes his long hair that matches Loraine’s and he likes the pale fabric and swishy dresses and sandals of his sisters’ hand-me-down clothing, as well their old plain t-shirts and jeans and sneakers, and his family’s never cared much one way or the other. His Aunt Lupe had laughed the first time he scooted downstairs in a dress, ruffling his hair.

 

“Just like Karen and Carlos,” she’d said. “They used to trade clothing all the time as children.”

 

He’s never understood the problem some people have with these things, and when he’d asked Loraine had always shaken her head and covered his cheeks in kisses, promising him that it didn’t matter and he could be whoever and whatever he wanted. The one time he’d been bothered about it, Evie had sent a viciously scolding e-mail, in sharp contrast to her meek in-person personality, to the school with links to articles about gender identity and expression, and after that Lance had been left alone.

 

He wonders vaguely if Hunk is going to be like that, is going to wrinkle up his nose and turn away, but instead he just beams and nods. “Alright, cool. I, uh, just moved here and so I don’t have anyone to hang out with, do you want to come play ball with me?”

 

Lance glances down at the soccer ball tucked under Hunk’s arm, and feels a smirk, mirrored from Marcie’s every time she gets a new hairstyle right, stretch across his face. “Only if you want to get your butt kicked.”

 

He spends the afternoon firmly beating Hunk at a one-on-one soccer match, and the next, and the next.

 

That summer easily becomes the best of Lance’s life. Hunk falls into place with Lance’s life like the spot was there already waiting for him, and he finds himself with a constant companion to spend his days with. Loraine, of course, is with them most days, because summers have always been for her and Lance, but for the first time Lance doesn’t find himself so achingly lonely when Loraine has to disappear for the day. While at first he worries about introducing Hunk to his family, Hunk takes to the McClain-Sanchez household like a fish to water, easily charming Lance’s mother and aunts with his politeness and honest, soft enthusiasm for helping out with things that need done.

 

Hunk, Lance comes to realize in time, is lonely—incredibly, deeply, heart-wrenchingly lonely. He doesn’t talk about his home life for the longest while and Lance doesn’t ask, but eventually it comes out in small pieces, about the father Hunk never knew and the mother who sends his grandmother a child support check each month without fail but never comes home. And Lance, for lack of a better solution, decided Hunk will simply have to be an honorary part of his own family.

 

Those hot summer months are good and simple. Lance spends his days with Hunk—eating popsicles on the porch with his bare feet in the grass, begging rides from Igraine up and down the street on her old motorbike she’d patched up with their uncle, playing soccer with Karen when she returns home for a short visit, and spending copious amounts of time digging around in Marcie’s makeup bag, clumsily drawing winged eyeliner on one another as Evie pretends not to notice from her space at the desk in the corner.

 

And of course, at night, he and Loraine sneak out to the park, just the two of them, and sit and watch the stars, whispering secrets and stories to one another as the moon rises.

 

It’s perfect.

 

And of course, because they are the family of odd-cut pieces stuck together in a world that’s never done them any favors, just as things hit their peak, they begin to disintegrate.

 

 

xxx

 

 

It begins with Mavis, the youngest of Lance’s three cousins, who runs away one night with a suitcase and the roll of bills Aunt Lupe had tucked away in the back of her sock drawer for emergencies, with only a small handwritten note left behind apologizing, explaining she can’t stay here and she’s gone to New York to find herself, and promising to send back money to pay off what she took once she can. Lance watches as things fall apart, as his aunt sits in the kitchen crying with Lucas a silent vigil by her side, his uncle works stone-faced on the old truck outside, and Carlos shouts angrily to the sky and kicks at the dirt outside. Mavis has always been a little distant, not as well-known to Lance as others in the family, prone to quiet silence and hours spent playing soft lullabies on her violin from her room, but she is still Lance’s cousin, and Aunt Lupe’s daughter, and Carlos and Lucas’s sister, and her disappearance leaves a gaping hole in their close-knit herd that can not be easily repaired.

 

Lance spends those first few days after Mavis leaves running away in his own sense, fleeing to the park, the store, anywhere, with Hunk and Loraine, Hunk perched on the back of Loraine’s bicycle and Lance on the handlebars as his sister pedals wherever they suggest, so long as it’s not back to the strange silence awaiting them at home. It is the first time Lance feels unsure and uncomfortable in his own house, and himself and Loraine are not the only ones. Marcie picks up extra shifts at the salon, Igraine takes off for day-long trips to nowhere on her motorbike, Karen returns to her college a month earlier than intended the minute her coach calls about prep for a late summer tournament, and even Evie finds her own way to hide, large headphones Aunt Rosa buys for her jammed onto her head as she sits up in the room she shares with Igraine and Marcie and works desperately on her computer.

 

Late July slips into August, and like Mavis is the first ripple in a wave, things continue to slip rapidly out of alignment. Carlos moves out of the house and into the small cottage two streets down with his now pregnant girlfriend of three years, and while normally this would be a cause for celebration, since their whole family loves Rachel like she is one of their own, and twenty-five is a perfectly rational time to start a family, after Mavis it feels like another blow to the nest, and Lance pretends not to listen when he hears his mother, aunts, and uncle discussing late one night how to compensate for the dip in their already tightly-stretched budget, with Mavis gone and Carlos now having to pool the majority of his earnings into his new home and expected child.

 

Lance’s mother and sisters aren’t fools and neither is he, and even at his age he can grasp the severity of the situation, but there’s little he can do, so instead he spends his time with Loraine on her bed as she works furiously on her Garrison application, due by mid October, her sights trained on her goal with steely determination.

 

“You watch, Lancie-Loo,” she whispers to him in their carved-out shared space for just the two of them. “Come January, I’ll get my letter and my one-way ticket to the stars.”

 

“You’ll take me with you, right?” he asks, curled up against her side as he watches her write, because he loves his family and his home with all his heart but he loves Loraine more than anything, and wherever she goes he wants to follow.

 

“Of course,” she laughs, and covers his cheeks with kisses on every light freckle that dots them. “I’ll take you with me to the edge of the galaxy and beyond when the time comes, I promise.”

 

And things from there are okay. Not perfect, not even _good,_ necessarily, but eventually on the tail end of summer a letter arrives from Mavis with a wad of bills and a promise she’s safe, and Carlos and Rachel move into their cottage and paint the future nursery walls a chipper light blue with help from Lance, Loraine, and Igraine. They go back to classes, and despite everything, Loraine still finds time to take Lance to school each morning on the handlebars of her bike, dropping him off on her way to the high school. She picks up an afterschool job at the bakery to help chip in with the household expenses, and Lance without question opts for spending every afternoon there at a table in the corner working on homework, often with Hunk accompanying him, than go home alone.

 

The slowly creeping autumn wind is chilly, and Lance trades his summer sandals for Evie’s old pink gumboots and his billowing skirts for Loraine’s old wool tights and patterned dress. He goes to school with Hunk and they spend the lesson times whispering and passing notes back and forth, both of them bored by the simple lessons of fourth grade, Lance already pushed up a year above his age and still losing his mind, and opting to instead sit and obsess over Loraine’s old astronomy books. They’re on their own, but it’s okay because they have each other in the day, and Loraine too in the afternoons, and when a kid grabs at Lance’s skirt during the second week of school and calls him a fag, Hunk punches the other boy without a second thought.

 

The principal yells for twenty minutes straight before losing to Marcie’s fiery words, and she takes them out for ice cream afterwards as a reward.

 

Slowly, an equilibrium begins to settle again.

 

And then, on the first of October, as she hangs up laundry on the line in the backyard with Lance and Loraine helping, their mother collapses suddenly and doesn’t get back up.

 

 _“Cancer.”_ Lance hears spoken in ominous voices in the hospital, tucked up in a ball against his Mamá’s side and under her arm. Closing his eyes blocks out the whitewashed hospital walls and iv drip shoved into his mother’s arm and the unnatural paleness in her cheeks framed by her long dark curls against the hospital issue pillow, but not the odd stillness of her body, broken only by the slight rise and fall of her chest, and the loud, panicked voices, of his sisters, cousins, aunts, even grandparents in strings of broken English and translated words whispered to them by Evie, as they argue with the doctors.

 

Later, much later, when Aunt Rosa comes and coaxes Lance away from the hospital bed and home for a few hours of sleep, he asks her in a quiet whisper what’s going to happen to his Mamá, and his aunt reassures him in a shaky voice that everything will be fine. It is in these moments Lance begins to understand how truly young his aunt is, baby of the Sanchez sisters and barely five years older than Marcie. It leaves Lance with a sick feeling in his stomach, to realize even his mother’s sister truly doesn’t know what to do anymore.

 

He goes to Loraine, after he escapes everyone else, abandoning his bed in favor of curling up in her arms as they both cry, exhausted and yet too shaken to sleep. Vaguely, Lance wonders if anyone has called Karen yet, or has gotten the word to Mavis—do they have her new phone number? Does she even have a phone anymore? It’s a million questions and concerns and fears buried deep and carving at Lance’s skull, threatening to pull him out from himself, and so he buries his face in Loraine’s hair and breathes the smell of her shampoo, a smell he knows like no other, and focuses on her arms, warm and protective, around him.

 

“Tell me,” he whispers, and waits patiently, because Loraine has never lied to him, it’s just not what they do.

 

She sighs, breath a shaky stutter. “Breast cancer. It’s— It’s bad. They say she’s got a chance but she’ll need to start the chemo right away and we don’t have the insurance to cover it all…”

 

Lance sniffles, and she hums, bringing his face up and wiping away his tears with a pained smile on her face. “Don’t cry, _cariño_. I promise you, things will work out. We’ll find a way.”

 

He nods, feeling more tears slip out as he curls up and rests his head on her chest, listening to her steady heartbeat as she combs her hands through his hair and tangles out the knots caught in the long strands. “Promise me you’ll never leave.”

 

“Never love, never.”


	2. Little (Lost)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “How cool would it be to meet a princess?” Hunk whispers one night when they are supposed to be asleep as they read by flashlight, crouched over the yellow-faded pages and old illustrations.
> 
>  
> 
> Lance wrinkles his nose, turning a page. “I’d rather be a princess.” He pauses. “Do you think if I married a princess that’d also make me a princess?”
> 
>  
> 
> Hunk frowns, shrugging. “Maybe? I think it’d probably have to be a prince you marry for that.”
> 
>  
> 
> “That works too.” Lance says carelessly, waving a hand, and Hunk snickers.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This was originally going to be one half of one chapter but I died writing it so I split it in two to save my soul.
> 
> It's still pretty well-sized though so have fun. I haven't killed anyone. Yet.

Things change significantly after that. Lance’s mother doesn’t come home. Instead, slowly, slowly, the little pieces of her life move into the hospital with her—the book from her bedside table, the plant off her windowsill, the small framed photo of the family they snapped last summer. ‘One week only’ slips into two, then three, then four. Drips and needles fill up his mother’s arms as the chemotherapy begins, and when Lance sits and brushes his Mamá’s hair for her one day on his daily afternoon visit with Loraine after her shift, a small clump of the dark wave falls out into his hands, and Lance is left wondering why one has to pour poison into their body just to fight a bigger internal foe.

 

No one can control fate or disease like this, but if anyone is deserving of such suffering, Lance knows it is not his mother. Not the smart, brave woman who has successfully raised six babies and kept their family afloat through the periods of struggle, who has worked two jobs near her whole life with never a complaint, if the money it produced gave her children a better chance in life.

 

Everyone does their best to keep the seriousness of the situation from Lance, with little effectiveness. He’s smart enough to tell when things are being kept from him, and he can read the body language of his family members like a book. Loraine especially, who still won’t lie to him, but won’t talk about things unless he directly asks her. It’s easiest, he finds, to listen in. It’s hardly a challenge to sneak down at night when they think he’s asleep, back curled against the closed kitchen door and watching the flickering light under the crack beneath the door with idle eyes as he listens to furiously whispered conversations.

 

Money becomes the biggest concern. They’ve always lived paycheck to paycheck, and the blow of Mavis leaving and Carlos moving out is nothing compared to the already descending hospital bills. The intensive chemotherapy and care Lance’s mother needs isn’t cheap, or even affordable, and the minimal insurance they could afford doesn’t come close to covering the bills. Things become a rush to find a way to pay for both the medical fees, present and predicted, and the cost of keeping them all in house and home. Aunt Rosa picks up a second job, Marcie and Aunt Lupe extra shifts at work, and Igraine and Uncle Jesús start working longer and longer hours at the mechanics. Evie never leaves her computer, only eating when Lucas forces food onto her, spending all her time programming and organizing and budgeting. Karen calls them up often, the nights when Lance is supposed to be asleep, and talks about coming back home, but she’s got less than a year of school left and has a professional team scouting her for when she graduates from university, and so everyone reassures her that they’ve got things sorted and she’ll do more good finishing her degree.

 

She has a good chance to succeed, it’s not right to pull her back when she’s worked so hard to get there. At least, that’s what Marcie says one night as they end a phone call with her.

 

Lance doesn’t know if he thinks that’s really fair. He doesn’t, of course, want Karen to give up her dream, especially not when she’s so close, but at the same time he worries about everyone else. Karen isn’t the only one with dreams, no matter how big or small, and everyone’s already worked so hard to give them what they have, even before this, the cancer, happened.

 

That feeling only multiplies when Lance comes home the final day the Garrison Academy applications are due, and finds Loraine’s, perfectly completed down to the final signature, crumpled in the trash in their room, her shoulders shaking where she lies curled up on her bed against the opposite wall.

 

He climbs up next to her, balled up with his knees to his chest and his back pressed to hers, staring out dully at the pile of papers in the bin.

 

“…Why’d you do it?”

 

She sniffles, quietly, pretending she hasn’t been crying, and when she speaks her voice is rough. “With the way things are now, I can’t just take off for a place where I won’t be able to send home any money. It’s just not practical.”

 

He shivers, pulling his legs in closer and hugging them. “But what about the stars?”

 

She laughs, the sound bitter and broken. “People like me don’t make it to the stars, Lance. The Garrison is an elitist organization built and overseen by the wealthy and influential, as is anything. There’s only one full scholarship each year and I was nowhere good enough to get it. Before, I thought if I got a partial scholarship perhaps we could scrape the money together but…now it’s all different. The least I can do is make sure Karen stays at school and keeps her shot.”

 

“But you promised,” Lance sniffs, feeling tears well in his eyes, and rubs at them angrily, wishing he could be bigger and braver like Loraine is, less selfish.

 

Loraine tenses, twisting around and hugging Lance to her chest until he un-balls with a small sob, wrapping his arms around her neck and clinging as she runs a hand through his hair and shushes him softly. He presses his face into her shoulder, feeling weeks of fear and worry and silence pour out as he wails, fingers fisting in Loraine’s shirt. “It’s not fair. It’s not fair, it’s not fair, it’s not _fair!”_

“I know, _cariño,_ ” Loraine whispers. “I know. I’m sorry. I swear we’ll find a way to see the stars one day, when things are different.”

 

The words are hollow, ringing like an empty promise, but Loraine has never lied to Lance and never will, so he nods, accepting what little Loraine can offer to him as truth, a certainty.

 

He needs _something_ to hold onto right now, at least. This will have to be enough. If everyone else is making sacrifices, Lance needs to grow up and start making them too.

 

Now is not the time to be a selfish baby.

 

 

xxx

 

 

Winter comes sweeping in from fall far too quickly as the leaves change colors then fall to the ground, and rain turns to snow with vicious enthusiasm. With the beach and its shops closed and deserted once the colder weather sets in and the park covered in a layer of frost, Lance spends his days at home curled up in piles of blankets with Hunk and watching old reruns of Star Trek on the battered old television in his and Loraine’s room. Some days, between the cold brick walls of school and the broken thermostat at home that stopped working last year but they can no longer afford to replace, Lance feels like he’s forgotten what it is like to truly be warm. The closest he gets is when he’s bundled up with another person, sharing their heat. Often the coldest evenings are spent in a heap on Loraine’s bed, himself and Hunk tucked under one of Loraine’s arms each and buried in blankets, often with Marcie or Igraine sneaking in to join them when they return home.

 

Ironically, the one place Lance should feel warm, given it’s the one place with round-the-clock heating, is the hospital, but all he feels whenever he enters is a cold rush of ice climbing up his veins.

 

He hates that hospital, with its white-washed and unblemished walls and its cold, clean, sanitized smell that makes him want to throw up. It’s so removed from the warm smells of candles and freshly-baked sweets of his home, with its peeling wallpaper and polaroid-littered walls in each bedroom, overstuffed couches and old wooden bedframes stuffed in halfhazardly, wherever they fit. Here, there’s no cushion-piled love seats or old bookshelves crammed with volumes and novels and comics, or any of it. Instead, there’s just the standard portable hospital bed and the two plastic chairs placed next to it for visitors.

 

There’s no getting around it though. Lance’s mother still hasn’t returned home, trapped there between the needles and tubes, complexion growing more pallid and sallow with each passing day. By Christmas, all her hair has fallen out, and on the day the last strands come loose and Marcie carefully wraps their mother’s bald head in a floral headscarf, Lance curls up under his Mamá’s arm, head on her chest, and pretends not to hear her quiet sobs as her shoulders shake.

 

Spring is a blessing, once the cold fades, and Loraine celebrates by taking Lance and Hunk to the beach the moment it’s barely warm enough, pushing through the fifteen minute bike ride in ten in her excitement. Lance gets bowled over by a wave and faceplants, conspires with Hunk to dump a bucket of water over Loraine when she’s not looking, and comes home with a cold, teeth chattering.

 

It’s the best day he’s had in months, momentarily free of the worry that has overtaken their home.

 

Loraine does her best to keep up cheer for Lance with outings like this, making a point to get him out of the house with Hunk, but underneath Lance can see how hollow her enthusiasm is. They don’t mention the Garrison application again after that singular conversation, but it’s clear to Lance his sister still mourns what might have been every time he catches her watching the stars at night with a forlorn expression.

 

He does the best he can, acting as happy as possible and dragging Loraine along to do fun things with him, and eventually her laughter and smiles become more sincere.

 

As summer flowers begin to bloom, Lance turns nine, and Rachel’s baby is born. Josie is a plump, bright child with the family’s traditional dark eyes and her mother’s light curls, and Lance loves her without question instantaneously. With a family as closely knit as theirs, there’s not much point in distinctions between siblings, cousins, and second cousins, and so Lance becomes Josie’s uncle and his sisters her aunts as much as Mavis and Lucas, her father’s actual siblings, do. It’s a bit odd to Lance to suddenly not be the smallest person in their family’s bundle, even if Josie technically lives in a separate household, but he takes to it with much the same enthusiasm as Loraine did to meeting him, according to his grandmother.

 

He’s quick to insist on learning to hold Josie, and delights in the times he’s allowed to sit on the living room’s overstuffed armchair with Josie tucked up in his arms, cheerful giggles and babbling coos spilling from her mouth as she tugs gently at his loose hair with her tiny hands. While Lance knows she won’t grow big enough to take on trips to do things for several years, he secretly can’t wait until she’s old enough to come on adventures with himself, Hunk, and Loraine.

 

…She does still make a pretty cute baby, though.

 

School lets out for summer just as Loraine turns seventeen, and Lance convinces her to switch to part-time shifts in order to better enjoy the best months of the year with him. They spend most days at the beach, the once hectic trip of trying to fit all the necessities for the day onto Loraine’s bicycle simplified by the old refurbished hoverbike their uncle and Igraine bring home for Loraine on her birthday.

 

“Just found it lying there on the side of the road," Igraine says when she gives it to Loraine, ruffling her baby sister’s long mess of hair. “Some idiot didn’t want it anymore, but I fixed it up just fine and it’ll get you around well enough. I know you always thought these were great when we were younger, so it’s all yours, beanpole. Happy birthday.”

 

Loraine spends the whole moment sniffling happily before pulling Igraine into a crushing hug, and then tugging Lance over to the bike to test ride it down the road with her. It takes one circle around the neighborhood, wind whipping through his hair as he clings to the back of Loraine’s jacket, for Lance to fall head over heels for the hoverbike just as much as Loraine did, and Hunk when he first lays eyes on it is no exception.

 

It becomes the summer of speed—fast races to the corner shop for popsicles and then to the beach or park with Loraine flying down dusty paths and Hunk and Lance perched on the bike behind her, the larger size of the hoverbike much more accommodating for fitting all three of them than Loraine’s bicycle had been. They loot the thrift shop and buy up three sets of ancient aviator goggles and ear-flapped winter hats that hold enough resemblance to the pilot’s caps in old war photos for their illusion, and coax Igraine into giving them some paint from the shop for decoration. They paint on racing stripes along the sides of the bike in white, blue, and yellow, one color chosen each, and in black along in the middle stripe they paint on the name.

 

Marcie laughs the first time she sees it, sticking her head out from the salon when they park in front of it to show off. “ _El león?_ Really? That’s the best you could come up with?”

 

“Shush!” Lance says, patting the seat below him. “You’ll hurt her feelings.”

 

The hoverbike lends them new freedom, and they take to it in the name of exploration, zooming along the radius of the beach and to the cliffs that hug the coast, and venturing out to the mountains and forests only a twenty-minute ride from their home. Lance fills his backpack up with sticks and pebbles and pieces of driftwood and shells from all their outings, and each week brings his findings to the hospital with Loraine to show their mother, telling her of the adventures attached to each souvenir.

 

She always listens intently, frame still frail but patches of color slowly returning to her skin, and Aunt Lupe tells Lance happily one day that his Mamá, who aside from a few short trips home has largely remained at the hospital, may soon be able to return home, so long as she returns to the hospital for weekly chemotherapy.

 

It’s a hopeful promise that brings life to their whole family again, content in the knowledge that the missing piece of their puzzle may soon come home. Lance’s grandfather, who has spent most of the last year quiet and solemn, slowly returns to his carving, tracing unique patterns into wood, and Lucas, who’s lived by supporting everyone else and helping around the house, seems to relax slightly for the first time in months, whispering quiet conversations with Igraine and Evie about the future and goals and adventures late at night when Lance is supposed to be sleeping. Lucas and Igraine in particular talk a lot about service and doing something important, and when he and Loraine go snooping for answers and find the marines pamphlets buried in Igraine’s desk drawer, Loraine bites her lip and swears Lance to secrecy.

 

The transition into school again comes far too soon for Lance’s liking, but he reluctantly kisses summer goodbye and goes back with Loraine for her final year of high school and his and Hunk’s final year of elementary. The kids there seem to dislike him even more than last year, offended by the tiny, skinny child a year younger than them with his pink boots and skirts and long, near waist-length hair. Lance believes in trying to get along with everyone just as his sisters taught him, but he also took Karen’s lessons about not taking shit from anyone to heart, and he knows a lost cause when he sees one, so he is polite and courteous, if distant with the other children, and takes what vengeful, if petty, satisfaction he can get from being top of the class with his near perfect test scores. Hunk also takes a disliking to anyone who has anything bad to say about Lance, as Lance does for anyone who speaks ill of Hunk, and so they spend their time together as always, Hunk braiding Lance’s hair while Lance reads aloud from whatever romance novel he’s stolen from Marcie’s shelf while the other children play.

 

It’s a gentle climb into the old routine from last year, mornings at school and afternoons in the bakery with Loraine, and then home for reading or a quiet show on Loraine’s bed, often with Hunk still tagging along until he either shoots home last minute or simply passes out and spends the night curled up on Lance’s bed with him, the wide frame easily fitting the both of them.

 

Lance’s mother comes home just before winter sets in, and they celebrate Christmas as a family back together again with every house member, along with Carlos, Rachel, Josie, and Hunk and his grandmother crammed in the house’s living room together as they chuck wrapping paper at one another and laugh.

 

It’s not all solved—there are hospital bills to pay and weekly chemotherapy appointments for Lance’s mother, and she is still too weak to go back to work, but she’s with all of them and that’s worth every sacrifice it took to get her well enough to come back home again.

 

Lance spends spring sprawled out across his bed with Hunk watching the rain pitter onto the window glass and wondering what middle school will be like. He’s in no way going to miss the elementary school, which had always been too slow for him, but there’s a fear that comes with the idea of middle school and being the youngest again. Hunk in particular seems affected by it, nervously stammering out imaginings of the horrors that await them, which often get so ridiculous Lance can’t help but laugh. Hunk, with his large build and firm, if polite, manner will be fine, Lance knows. If anything, the one worried should be Lance, in all his underaged, undersized glory, but he doesn’t give into the temptation. He is a McClain, and that means he is strong, just like his family.

 

He turns ten, and Hunk eleven, with a sweep of presents and celebration. His and Hunk’s birthdays are only three weeks apart, and Loraine’s another ten short days after Lance’s, the trio of early summer as Marcie sometimes called them, so they opt for cramming together their parties into one giant summer kick-off fiesta, made only bigger by the fact Loraine is turning eighteen. They choose the beach, everyone packing out on their bikes and the old family jeep and Carlos’s newly bought used Toyota, and make camp on the sunniest spot facing the cliffs, cramming picnic tables together and setting up umbrellas until they have their own little circle just next to the shoreline.

 

Lucas gives Lance and Hunk their first surfing lessons, he and Loraine eat a whole ice cream quart between the two of them with just a pair of spoons, and Lance cries three separate times for no particular reason other than sheer, overwhelming joy.

 

Marcie begs some tourist into snapping a family photo of all of them, Lance tucked up on Loraine’s hip with his legs around her waist and arms around her neck like he used to when she frequently carried him when he was younger, and Hunk standing next to them with Loraine’s spare arm resting on Hunk’s shoulder while Josie simultaneously leans down from her mother’s hold and yanks on Hunk’s hair, leaving him with an expression of surprised pain in the picture. Despite Hunk’s complaints about how he looks, Lance still prints a copy and tapes it up onto the wall next to his bed.

 

By the time Lance enters middle school, his hair is long enough to brush his hips, much to his delight as he gazes in the mirror and comes to the conclusion it is indeed the exact length as Loraine’s is. Hunk helps him braid it into two neat pigtails for the first day of class, constantly blowing his ever-overgrown bangs out of the way to see, until Lance gives a fed up sigh and fetches a spare ribbon, trying it across Hunk’s head so his bangs are pushed up and out of his eyes. Hunk looks surprised for all of two seconds before he glances in the mirror and grins abashedly, hands coming up to fidget with the knotted ends of the ribbon.

 

“How are you going to braid my hair if you can’t even manage your own? It’s unacceptable," Lance tells him firmly, pretending not to notice Hunk’s grateful smile even as he slips a few more long ribbons in the shade of yellow he knows Hunk favors into his friend’s bag. Hunk chooses not to say thank you, knowing Lance will be too stubborn to acknowledge it, so he instead shows his gratitude by helping Lance with the two new blue ribbons for the ends of his braids and the sash on the back of his dress, an old one of Evie’s Lance has had his eye on for years, just waiting for the moment he was big enough for it.

 

It all seems so easy at first, getting dressed and stepping out the door and hitching a ride to school on the back of _león_ from Loraine on her way to work, but Lance quickly learns the differences between his old school and new. Here, he is even smaller than everyone else, on another level compared to elementary school, and the few appreciative looks he gets from a couple boys when he and Hunk slip into their first classroom quickly turn sour when the teacher calls role and Lance answers to his name.

 

 _A boy in girl’s clothes, a tranny, a fag_ whispers around him in hushed voices, and he unconsciously leans into Hunk’s side as Hunk shrinks against him as well, wide and fearful eyes trained on a pair of girls that blatantly look at him and mumble about the _big fat kid._ These children are unfamiliar to Lance for the most part, only a few from his own elementary school, and he is afraid.

 

Things only get worse once the lessons begin and it quickly comes to light Lance and Hunk are both going to be the smart kids pushing the rest of the class and holding the best grades from them.

 

That becomes the year of hell, of hiding in the bathrooms from the older kids that seek them out to bully and tease them, of dodging punches and living to fight another day, and of being so, so thankful when the final bell rings.

 

The first time Lance comes home with a bruise on his cheek, his family sweeps in with a fiery fury, but middle school is not elementary, and while Evie in her usual verbose and threatening emails secures that the school indeed officially can not touch Lance for what he wears or how long his hair is, that doesn’t stop teachers from looking the other way when kids corner Lance and Hunk in the hallways. Despite the harassment, not once does Lance think about giving in. His clothing is his own and his body is his own, and he likes the soft skirts given to him from his sisters as much as the jeans Lucas passes down to him, and he likes his hair, and no person is going to take that away from him.

 

Eventually, things calm down. A few too many trips to the principal’s office finally clue the bullies in question into the fact that every time they come at Lance they’re going to be met with bared teeth and clawed hands that leaves scratches on their cheeks and bruises on their shins from Lance’s kicks, and that the same will happen if they get near Hunk when Lance is around to stand guard, and they move on to easier targets, save for a few who occasionally still try to poke fun at the two of them. In the end, Lance comes out with a rap sheet as long as his arm and far too many afternoons spent in detention, but people more or less leave him and his braids, and Hunk and his soft smiles, alone, and that is enough.

 

Winter comes and passes into spring and Lance’s mother celebrates another Christmas at home, still on chemo but improving slightly every day, and Lance spends the cold days inside watching movies with Loraine and Hunk and begging Marcie into teaching him how to use her curler and straightener. Mavis, still gone from home but always writing, send Lance a little package just after New Years with a little set of lip glosses and a note that she’s proud of him.

 

Lance goes through the rains of spring with strawberry-flavored lips and a backpack full of novellas stolen from the shelves of his sisters. When he finishes all of Marcie’s romance books, he moves on to Evie’s fantasy series, losing himself in worlds of magical animals and princesses and knights.

 

“How cool would it be to meet a princess?” Hunk whispers one night when they are supposed to be asleep as they read by flashlight, crouched over the yellow-faded pages and old illustrations.

 

Lance wrinkles his nose, turning a page. “I’d rather _be_ a princess." He pauses. “Do you think if I married a princess that’d also make me a princess?”

 

Hunk frowns, shrugging. “Maybe? I think it’d probably have to be a prince you marry for that.”

 

“That works too,” Lance says carelessly, waving a hand, and Hunk snickers.

 

 

xxx

 

 

The heat of summer slowly begins to crawl its way in, and Lance finds himself looking forward to its arrival more than ever, if only to escape school, which has settled into a bearable, if unpleasant necessity. It’s been weeks since the last time anyone tried anything with Lance, and normally he’d be grateful for the reprieve, but in the last fight he’d given a popular boy a black eye, and he can feel the impending retaliation building in every sidelong glance other students give him, like he has a target painted on his back. Hunk too seems to feel the change in the air, and sticks closer to Lance than ever, playing the bodyguard if in appearances only.

 

…Not that Lance suspects Hunk wouldn’t land a pretty hard blow to someone who hurt him. They looked out for each other, always have.

 

Still, Hunk can’t be with Lance constantly, and eventually there comes a moment when it’s all too easy for them to grab Lance by surprise. It’s the last day of school, because of course it is, Lance is pretty sure they picked that day just for the dramatics of it. Lance is walking into the bathroom and someone just behind the door grabs his braid, yanking it back and away from his head in a sharp movement that leaves Lance reeling in pain, until there’s a snip and suddenly there’s no pulling sensation anymore, there’s nothing, and Lance falls to the ground as he hears the scamper of two pairs of feet disappear out the door and down the hall. When he forces himself to look up and around, Lance sees a pair of scissors lying on the ground next to something long and brown, and Lance realizes it’s his braid just as he reaches a hand up and feels short clumps of hair along the back of his neck just above his shoulders sticking out.

 

He sucks in a breath, carefully easing his fingers along his scalp and wincing at the tender skin from his hair being pulled so hard, and feels his shoulders shake as the first few tears slip free.

 

It’s just pain, just a bruise that’ll heal over, he tells himself firmly. It’s nothing worth crying and acting like a baby over.

 

But when he unsteadily pushes himself to his feet and gazes into the mirror at the short, spiky hair that’s so foreign to him against his face with its red-rimmed, pathetic eyes and blotchy skin, he can’t help but sob.

 

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Feel free to come talk to me about Lance, his boyfriend Keith, Voltron, or whatever over on tumblr [here](http://pastel-clark.tumblr.com/).


	3. Loraine

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hello gorgeous people! Y'know how I said I hadn't killed anyone yet? _well_.
> 
> Oh, really quickly, I'd just like to say thank you for all the super sweet comments I've been getting. I wasn't really expecting to get much response from this fic, and so many nice words really made me happy. I normally don't respond to most comments because I'm a shy goober, but just know I read them all. <3
> 
> Also! If you want something to listen to while reading, I [accidentally made a playlist for this fanfic.](http://pastel-clark.tumblr.com/post/151606553502/so-i-accidentally-made-a-playlist-for-a) Whoops.

Lance nears eleven hidden in his room, burying himself from the world to the very best of his ability.

 

After the day he’s cornered in the bathroom, he comes home thanking every deity that comes to mind that it was at least the last day of school. When he gets inside, escorted from school by Hunk, who’d been the one to come looking and find him in the bathroom when he didn’t come to their next class, Lance runs up to his room, ignoring any calls from his family, and locks the door.

 

And that’s where he remains.

 

He enlists Hunk to hunt out the biggest of Mavis’s old hoodies for him, and wears it, hood up, constantly. He can’t bear to look at his own reflection, let alone have others look at him, to see what had been done to him. Instead, he barricades himself in his room, reluctantly making Hunk his go-to support as the other had already seen underneath the hood. It's still degrading, humiliating, to know someone has seen that, to have to interact with someone with him looking like this, but he has to at least eat, and better Hunk, who knows and who will keep his silence, than someone else.

 

Even Loraine Lance finds unable to look at, burying himself under his blankets whenever she comes into the room and ignoring her whenever she speaks to him, locking the door when he knows she’ll be at work. There’s knocking on the door often—his mother, one of his aunts, Igraine, Lucas, they even put Karen on speakerphone outside the door once, he keeps his silence and his seclusion from them all.

 

He feels like a monster, a _freak_ , every time he looks in the mirror or touches his head, feels the short strands around his face. The last thing Lance wants is for his family to see that.

 

Eventually, after a few days, Marcie is the first one to coax her way in, with the promise she’s brought her tools to clean up the chop-job the boys at school had done and give Lance a presentable cut. Lance relents after a bit of persuasive begging on Marcie’s part, but he still can’t bring himself to look at her as she snips away the irregular strands and straightens up the fringe. Afterwards, she runs a single hand through his hair, and he’s up like a lightening bolt, hood back over his head and on the other side of the bed.

 

“You’re still beautiful, Lancie,” she tells him softly. “They can’t take that away from you, no one can.”

 

He stays quiet, face hidden and curled up in a ball until she leaves.

 

After that, he slowly eases back in to sneaking around the rest of the house, venturing out for his own food or a book before quietly returning. His family is ridiculously, blessedly, patient with him, talking to him with idle chatter and kind words without demanding a response, and allowing him to continue to take his food up to his room when he doesn’t feel capable of eating meals with them. It gets to be bearable, at least, being outside his room where they can see him, so long as his hood is up, Hunk ever-present and vigilant at his side. Lance suspects Hunk might blame himself for what happened to Lance, not that Lance in any way thinks it was his fault, and so he endeavors to be there for Lance every day, regardless of the fact it means endless hours cooped up in the house, sitting on Lance’s bed and looking out the window quietly.

 

Loraine is the one Lance still finds himself avoiding the most, even when he’s managed to bring himself to at least be _seen_ by the rest of the household. He’s not completely sure why, given Loraine would normally be Lance’s first confidant with this sort of thing, but he thinks a part of it might simply be the fact that Lance has always sough to emulate her appearance—and now he is damaged, ruined.

 

He loves Loraine more than anything else in the world. To have her see him like this, to risk her no longer loving him…it’s terrifying, in a way that is beyond anything Lance might feel about anyone else and what they think of him.

 

Lance loves his family and Hunk, but the one constant throughout his whole life has always, _always_ , been Loraine.

 

She accepts it with remarkable restraint, seeking out Lance when she comes home from work each day but never pressing him when he shies away and avoids her, until a couple weeks into summer when Lance’s birthday arrives, and she apparently decides enough is enough, breaking down the locked door with a sweep of energized gusto and crowding into Lance’s space.

 

“Lance,” she says as he curls in on himself, back to her. “Lancie… Loo-Loo, Lancie-Loo, c’mon look at me.” She huffs when he ignores her, patience worn thin.

 

 _“Lance Alexander Rafael.”_ The words are firm, unyielding. They don’t really use their middle names, save when their mother yells at them when they’ve been causing trouble. More than once Lance has seen Marcie or Igraine hightail it to their room with a shout of _Marcelia Josefina Moana_ or _Igraine Amelia Pilar_ echoing loudly from downstairs.

 

 _“Loraine Ophelia Eliza,”_ Lance parrots with a snap before he can stop himself, rolling around to glare at her before falling short, eyes widening in surprise.

 

Loraine’s long hair is gone, replaced with a neat, slightly curly bob just above her shoulders in a perfect match to Lance’s, her smile bright as she pushes a few stray strands back from her face. “What do you think?”

 

“I don’t—what?” is all he stumbles out, focus trailing the sway of the short cut.

 

“Now we match again,” Loraine says, voice calm, as if that’s simple, and maybe it is. Of course Loraine, who powered her way through life and kept Lance as her own, Loraine, who threw away her dreams for the good of the family, would seek out such a simple solution.

 

Of course she’d mold herself to be what Lance needed without a second thought.

 

In an instant he’s up, arms around her neck and face pressed into her shoulder, newly shortened strands tickling his face, as he sobs. “I’m sorry. I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry.”

 

A gentle hand traces through his hair, and for the first time Lance doesn’t flinch away as it runs in between the short strands. “It’s alright.”

 

He sits back, rubbing a hand across his face. “I’ve been acting… stupid.”

 

“No, you haven’t,” Loraine says primly. “But that’s okay, it’s okay. Everything’s going to be alright, yeah? Trust in your favorite _hermana_ when she says that. Now—“ She straightens up, glancing out the window. “The sun’s bright and it’s your _birthday,_ that deserves some fun. Hunk’s waiting downstairs and _león_ is all set up for a trip. Why don’t we get out there and hit the beach?” She wiggles her eyebrows. “I’ve also got three cartons of rotten eggs from the bakery and the addresses of the boys who dared to touch my baby bro, courtesy of Evie.”

 

Lance laughs slightly, sliding off the bed and, as an afterthought, pulling off the dirty hoodie and switching it for one of his favorite shirts, for once unbothered by the feel of his hair exposed to the slight breeze from the open window. “Yeah, alright.”

 

“Excellent.” Loraine grins, grabbing her favorite jacket, an old army green thing with a white hood and orange stripes on the sleeves, off her bed and yanking it on, before herding him out the door.

 

“Hey,” she says quietly, throwing an arm over his shoulder as they trek down the stairs. “What do you say for my birthday in a couple weeks we take a day, just the two of us? I think you’re getting big enough I can convince Mamá to let me take you out to the mountains for a spot of adventure.”

 

Lance smiles, ducking his head. “That sounds good.”

 

 

xxx

 

 

On Loraine’s nineteenth birthday, they pack up the hoverbike and take off with their backpacks and climbing gear as the sun rises, a gentle breeze drifting through the air.

 

The mountains had always been one of Loraine’s secrets, perhaps the only one Lance was not privy to participation in. She’d started climbing years ago on the smaller cliffs along the beach, seeking out better spots higher up for watching the stars with her telescope, and it had slowly grown from there. Loraine had told Lance once that climbing, being out there up in the sky with no one around, felt like an escape from everything.

 

While Lance had been allowed on a few short hikes around the lower rises along the beach, the mountains themselves had always been the one place he could not follow Loraine. He had begged his mother numerous times over the years, only for her to cluck her tongue and remind him that what his nearing adulthood sister was capable of was not what he, a little boy, was able to do. Lance had always pouted in response, but had adhered to his mother’s rules. She was right, at least, that climbing could be dangerous if you didn’t do it properly.

 

Still, apparently Loraine had managed to convince their Mamá that Lance is old enough now—or perhaps she was just glad enough to see him out and about again that she let the usual rules slide.

 

Either way, when Loraine pulls up the bike and Lance gets his first glimpse at the heart of the Veradera Mountains, he’s not complaining. He’s been around the edges before with Hunk and Loraine on rides, but this... it’s gorgeous land—high peaks of craggy rock that seem to touch the sky, intermeshed with scatterings of trees he knows will be coated in snow in the winter set against a backdrop of white clouds and bright sunlight that bounces off the different colors of rock.

 

They’re lucky to live in a place like they do, honestly; so close to the ocean and yet in easy distance of all this nature. Lance’s mother had told him once it had just been circumstance. Veradera had simply been the first place they found with cheap living, good work, and the ocean right next door, which had been the only location requirement for his mother’s family. She’d often told him stories when he was little about her youth in Cuba before their family came here, of the bright beaches and constant Spanish flowing in market stall chatter every weekend.

 

Sometimes, Lance thinks it’d be a beautiful place to see, but at the same time he can’t imagine anywhere but Veradera.

 

This is home.

 

Loraine slips off the bike and starts unloading their gear, tossing Lance his pack. Pulling out his harness and ropes, an old one of Loraine’s that just barely fits him, Loraine reaches over as soon as he’s slipped it on and secures the ropes, making a face at it as she tugs at the straps. “There we go, just small enough for you, mini-stalk.”

 

Lance giggles at the name, unable to stop himself. It’s Igraine’s newest nickname for him, proclaiming that since Loraine is already _beanstalk_ and Lance is “basically a smaller version of ol’ Lori”, according to her, that makes him the mini-stalk.

 

Loraine grins, pushing back her hair. Lance still isn’t used to the short cut on her, just like he hasn’t fully adjusted to his own, but it doesn’t look bad on her, just different.

 

“You ready to go, Loo-Loo?”

 

“I was born ready,” he says with all the confident bluster Marcie uses when saying the same line, and Loraine laughs, picking him up and hoisting him over a shoulder as she heads for the gap between two ridges that leads to where she normally starts her climbs.

 

 

xxx

 

 

Climbing turns out to be natural for Lance, just as Loraine proudly proclaims it should be. He’s the little her, after all. Anything she can do, so can he, and better, since he has her to teach him too.

 

It’s a rush, scampering between the ridges and rock faces and gaps, and one Lance finds exhilarating. He loves the speed of it, quickly moving up and around and finding the next handhold per Loraine’s instructions from right below him, calmly checking his every move. She keeps him to the easier climbs for the most part, the parts she has climbed regularly for years, so he can get a grip on it, but promises him that after more practice he’ll soon be ready to join her on the more difficult parts of the mountains.

 

More than anything though, it’s just…nice. Between school and Loraine’s work and the _bathroom incident_ , as Aunt Rosa has taken to calling it, it’s been a long while since there’s been time for Lance and Loraine, just the two of them. Lance hadn’t realized how much he missed it, that quiet companionship that comes only from Loraine’s sole company, and it makes him eager to plan out a summer of more climbing expeditions and nights of star watching, as they used to do.

 

The two of them stop for lunch up on a ridge overlooking the expanse of the mountain range, splitting sandwiches with Lance leaning into Loraine’s side, watching a few stray birds fly past.

 

“I wish we could stay here,” is what slips out as he finishes off his last sandwich, and Lance is surprised to realize that the statement is at least partially true.

 

It’s safe here—away from the bullies at school, the never-ending financial strain at home, and the ever-present fear of their mother regressing in her recovery and having to go back to the hospital.

 

Up here, in the sky, it’s just him and Loraine, close to the stars as they’d always talked about.

 

Loraine sighs, dropping a kiss onto the top of his head and ruffling his hair. “I know, Lancie. Believe me, I know.” Slowly, she shifts, scooping their trash into her bag. “C’mon, it’s about time we start heading back.” Lance pouts, and she grins. “Oh hush. I’ll let you wear my jacket in exchange, how about that?”

 

In an instant, Lance is up, arms out and hands making grabbing motions as Loraine shrugs off her favorite jacket, and therefore Lance’s favorite jacket too, and hands it to him. He pulls it on with a bright smile, pushing the oversized green sleeves up his arms futilely until Loraine takes pity and rolls up the cuffs for him, smoothing down the collar and white hood before zipping it closed.

 

“Alright, let’s get going.”

 

The descent back down is easy going, compared to going up, at first, but as they’re walking carefully along a ridge towards the rock face where they can more easily continue climbing down, Lance first feels it.

 

The rumbling.

 

“Can you feel that?” he whispers, coming to a stop.

 

Loraine pauses. “Feel what?”

 

“It’s almost like…an earthquake? Maybe?”

 

Loraine frowns, glancing back at him. “In Maryland? Not exactly common here.”

 

Lance shrugs, then tenses with Loraine as another rumble passes through, stronger this time, and shuddering the rock beneath them. Lance watches his sister’s eyes widen, and then there’s a hand grabbing his, pulling him along quickly. “Shit, _shit_. We’ve got to get down, _now_.”

 

“Loraine—“ Lance tries, and the shaking begins again, loosening the rock beneath his feet and causing him to stumble with a surprised gasp, teetering over the edge with the rope connecting them dragging Loraine along with him.

 

He hits rock hard, knocking the breath out of him as he feels himself roll down a steep slope, barely able to see in the rush of dust and shaking rock, his only reassurance Loraine is still there with him her screaming. A small part of him registers that means she’s still alive, and well enough to make noise, but the rest of him is in a panic, hurtling and slamming into rocks with yelps of pain.

 

Finally, _finally_ , he manages to grab a handhold just as Loraine does, both of their lower bodies flying over the edge of a ledge as they grasp weakly at outcroppings of rock. Loraine grunts, fixing her grip on the rock she’s clinging to and going to pull herself up when the rock shudders and breaks off, sending her hurtling back off the edge. Lance barely has a moment to brace and hold onto his handhold tighter before the weight trying to pull him over the edge doubles, the rope between him and Loraine pulled taught as she swings below him. He can’t help the scream of terror that he lets out, the added strain tearing at his arms as he clings desperately, because he knows if he lets go that will be the end for both him and Loraine.

 

Below him, he hears scrabbling and Loraine’s voice cursing loudly, clearly unable to reach a hold on the rock wall and climb back up. After a moment she goes still, breath panting.

 

“ _Mierda,”_  comes a hoarse whisper, and Lance feels his stomach plummet. “…Lance?”

 

“Y-Yeah?” he chokes out, keeping his focus on maintaining his hold on the rock.

 

“I can’t—I can’t reach the rock face, this ledge is too far out. I’m just treading air here.” Her voice is eerily calm, and Lance wants to scream.

 

“I—“

 

“Lance, listen.” Her tone is firm, not allowing room for argument. “There’s no possible way for me to climb back up, and even if I could, I’m pretty sure I snapped an ankle. I’d never make it down.” The rock around them rumbles once more, and her breath hitches. “I’m—I’m going to cut the rope, and when I do I need you to pull yourself up, alright? Pull yourself up and get as far away from the edge as possible.”

 

“What? No!” he screams. “What about you?!”

 

It’s a sharp drop from here, at least thirty or forty feet, onto bare rock. A fall like that is…

 

“I’m sorry,” Loraine whispers, voice shaky, and Lance feels the first vibration of something sawing through the rope.

 

“No!” he screeches, twisting desperately to try and get a look over his shoulder. “Loraine, no! Please!”

 

There comes a snap from more strands of the rope breaking free, and Lance strains, wildly trying to get a glimpse of what’s happening below him.

 

And then, just slightly in his panic, his hold loosens, and Lance loses his grip.

 

He screams, just once, as he goes over the edge, and then something is yanking on him, using the rope to tug him closer before a larger body encompasses his, shielding him and curling around him, protecting his head.

 

He hits the ground, and everything goes dark.

 

 

xxx

 

 

Lance comes to in a sharp movement, gasping as he snaps awake and is immediately assaulted by pain, a roaring headache pounding underneath his skull and his left leg burning as if on fire. He shifts, blearily looking out at the displaced rock around him, before the fall comes back to him and his eyes widen, scrambling to get himself up.

 

As he turns and pushes himself up slightly on his hands, wincing at the searing pain from his leg, Lance realizes it’s not rock he’s resting on, but a chest, clad in a familiar sky blue shirt he remembers Loraine wearing.

 

 _Loraine_. She must have been what grabbed him when they were falling. She saved him.

 

He chokes out a pained laugh, glancing up at the edge of his sister’s face resting against the rock ground, a mess of displaced dark hair covering the rest of it. “L-Loraine. Loraine! Wake up, we made it!”

 

 _We made it, we’re alive,_ thrums in his chest, heart racing. Lance is pretty sure it’s not supposed to be beating that fast, but he’ll take fast over not beating at all any day.

 

He blinks when Loraine doesn’t respond, shifting a hand to gently shake her shoulder. “Loraine?”

 

Nothing.

 

“Loraine?! C’mon, this isn’t funny! You’re scaring me!” She stays silent, and Lance scrambles up, pushing himself up on one hand so her can reach out and push Loraine’s hair away from her face. “Lorai—“

 

Dark hair is pushed back to her forehead, and Lance is met with wide, open eyes, staring out at nothing. Screaming, Lance stumbles back, falling off Loraine and onto the ground next to her.

 

“No, no. _Please, no._ ”

 

Surely it must be a mistake. She’s fine, she has to be.

 

But her eyes remain blank, chest not rising and falling as it should be as one breathes, and when Lance reaches a shaky hand out to her neck, he finds no pulse.

 

Sobbing, he rapidly scoots back, dragging his broken leg, until his shoulders hit rock, and then he curls up, hiding his face in his knees and pulling the hood of his jacket, _Loraine’s_ jacket, over his head.

 

This can’t be happening.

 

He’s always read in stories that when people die they look at peace, like they’re sleeping, but Lance can’t find anything peaceful about this. The motionless body lying across from him isn’t Loraine. Oh, sure, it wears her face, her clothes, her eyes, but there’s none of Loraine’s warmth—her smile, her laughter, her energy, there.

 

He can’t see her in it, no matter how many times he shakily sneaks a glance, and he has plenty of time to do that.

 

It takes hours before the rescue workers find them.

  

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Boy howdy do I love the smell of character death in the morning.
> 
> For the record, even though no one asked, Evie's full name is Genevieve Laura Sofia, and Karen's is Karen Angelica Mercedes.
> 
> ...Don't ask me why I put so much thought into this. 
> 
> Feel free to come talk to me about Lance, his boyfriend Keith, Voltron, or whatever over on on tumblr [here](http://pastel-clark.tumblr.com/) .


	4. Legacy

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> He feels dead, for lack of a better word. Maybe Loraine saved his body, but his soul died with her, and he has no clue how to get it back. How is he supposed to live now, as half a person? He _can’t_ be all of Lance without Loraine, just as she couldn’t be all of Loraine without him. They needed each other, to be complete. From the moment Lance was born, that was how it had been. 
> 
> And now Loraine is gone.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> From the chat logs:
> 
> [10/22/16, 6:06:41 PM] Mossy: Clark I'm on chapter 3 and no one's even died yet and I'm already crying bless Loraine.  
> [10/22/16, 6:07:25 PM] H.P. Clark: Double bless her she's gonna need it  
> [10/22/16, 6:08:44 PM] Mossy: Clark they're going mountain climbing.  
> [10/22/16, 6:09:01 PM] Mossy: _They're going mountain climbing._  
>  [10/22/16, 6:09:09 PM] H.P. Clark: H.P. Clark wiggles eyebrows  
> [10/22/16, 6:09:14 PM] H.P. Clark: **Cliffs**
> 
> Eyyo pretty people here's a new chapter for you~ Sorry it took so long! I ended up splitting the intended chapter in two just to try and get something out to y'all at a reasonable time.  
> Thank you for all the sweet comments I got on the last chapter. It was surprising, but nice, to see how attached everyone's become to Loraine lol.
> 
> Also! A little bonus. I'm a horrible artist when my tablet's broken (I'm talking like, shocking), but I did some quick doodles of the McClain sister's if y'all are curious. [You can check them out here if you fancy.](http://pastel-clark.tumblr.com/post/151959072772/my-tablets-on-the-fritz-again-so-these-are-all)

The funeral is a somber affair, a bleak mark against what Lance feels is an otherwise obnoxiously sunny day. He supposes a part of him should look upon it favorably, Loraine had always enjoyed the sun after all, but mostly he just feels bitter that the sky dare to look so cheery when Lance’s whole world has been snatched away from him.

 

Their whole family is a bit lost, honestly. There’s no family plot in the cemetery here—that’s back in Cuba, with the dying memories of generations of old. Loraine is the first of their family to die on American soil. Lance’s grandmother talks idly about burying her in Cuba, but they don’t have that kind of money, nor would Lance allow it anyways. Veradera was Loraine’s home just at is Lance’s, the only one she ever knew. To take her from that would just be…wrong.

 

…It’s all wrong, regardless. This sort of thing isn’t supposed to happen. Loraine was young, alive. She was supposed to fly, and she was supposed to take Lance with her.

 

Instead, she’s just a small headline in the local paper about a _freak accident_.

 

Lance had gathered every copy of that paper he could find and had set them on fire, determined to destroy every single one he could get his hands on.

 

Loraine deserves a better legacy than that.

 

She deserved better, period.

 

Everyone’s worried about him, he knows. He can see it in their eyes, their hesitant gestures, whenever they’re around him. It’s like the silence of the weeks following the hair incident, only so many times worse. That was about shame, about a period of adjustment. But this? It’s a void, apathy and pain pooling low in Lance’s gut and spreading throughout his body like an infection he can’t get rid of, not that he’d have to energy to try to even if he knew how.

 

He feels dead, for lack of a better word. Maybe Loraine saved his body, but his soul died with her, and he has no clue how to get it back. How is he supposed to live now, as half a person? He _can’t_ be all of Lance without Loraine, just as she couldn’t be all of Loraine without him. They needed each other, to be complete. From the moment Lance was born, that was how it had been.

 

And now Loraine is gone.

 

Lance doesn’t talk. He doesn’t sequester himself away, either, doesn’t lock his door, but he doesn’t move unless someone makes him. It’s easier to spend the days just lying on Loraine’s bed, giving in to the numb feeling in his bones. He doesn’t cry much, but that’s mostly because he’s already used up all the tears he seems to have.

 

Those, for the most part, got wasted at the hospital.

 

Hospitals, Lance finds, suck just as much when you are the one trapped in them when visiting hours end.

 

That is where he wakes up, once the rescue workers come for him. He thinks they might have taken him there by helicopter, but he can’t really remember. He blacked out not long after they first arrived, pain and terror and exhaustion finally overriding the adrenaline that had kept him awake and alert until then.

 

He stays at the hospital for near a whole week. First for his leg, which needs surgery just to put it back together, and then on a psychiatric hold when he refuses to eat afterwards.

 

When they think he’s asleep, Lance hears his mother and Marcie whispering with a nurse about ways to recognize self-harm and suicidal tendencies.

 

 _That’s not it_ , Lance wants to say. He’s not trying to die, he’s not trying to do _anything_. It just hurts too much to do anything but lay there in silence.

 

Hunk, at least, seems to get it. He’s Lance’s rock, as always, accepting his silence without question, and instead choosing to be a quiet, steady presence at Lance’s side. A chest for Lance to rest his head on and listen to Hunk’s heartbeat as a sort of reassurance his own is still beating as well.

 

Hunk is mourning too, Lance knows. Loraine was just as much family to him as she was to Lance or any of his sisters, and Lance can see his grief in every silent moment and shaky smile he forces on for Lance’s sake.

 

Still, Hunk is Hunk, and he copes with busy work, endeavoring to look after everyone, specifically Lance, even through his own pain. He is the one to patiently push every bite of food into Lance’s hands and every glass of water to his lips, abandoning all pretense of their separate households in favor of being there to talk Lance through his nightmares each night.

 

It’s probably a better way to handle things, honestly, compared to Lance. At least it’s productive. But, they all handle things differently, fall apart and pull themselves back together in their own ways.

 

Lucas, ever the homebody, does much the same as Hunk, bustling about his mother and father and keeping them busy, while simultaneously keeping the kitchen churning out food for them all. Lance’s mother is quiet, spending the days hunching over the kitchen table while Aunt Rosa flutters nervously around her, trying to coax her older sister into eating.

 

Marcie cries, all the time, doing her best to help out but falling apart at the slightest push. Igraine works, tearing apart the motors of her pet projects with vicious diligence, burying herself in the motion of it all. Evie, too, is much the same, spending her days typing frantically and hiding away in the world of code.

 

Karen comes home for the first time in near a year in a moment of bittersweet surprise, swept up by their mother in a wave of teary hugs and kisses. Any other time, it’d be nice to have her back, and perhaps for parts of the family it is, but Lance just…can’t bring himself to care much one way or another. It’s been so long since Karen was part of their household, and it shows—she’s just a little bit off in the routines, looking for a book that got moved to a shelf downstairs six months ago or hugging Lance like he’s still six inches shorter than he currently is.

 

Don’t get him wrong, he loves Karen, she’s his sister after all, and a distant part of him is glad she’s home, but the larger part of Lance finds her presence grating. It feels like he’s only getting Karen back in _exchange_ for Loraine.

 

It’s awkward. Karen doesn’t quite know how to treat him either, and it shows. Lance had almost forgotten she used to share the room with him and Loraine before she went off to college, and to have her back in the previously unoccupied bed pushed into the far corner with a bunch of soccer posters hung above it is strange, to say the least. He doesn’t know how to share his space with her, too used to the life that was just him, Loraine, and on most nights, Hunk, and it seems neither does she. It only takes her a week before she gets Igraine and Marcie to help her shift her bed out of Lance’s room and into the one the rest of his sisters now share. A small part of Lance feels guilty for indirectly forcing four people to share one fairly small room, but the larger part is grateful to have his space return to just a place for him and Hunk, the two of them and Loraine’s things crowded into one isolated spot he feels relatively safe in.

 

Technically, Lance isn’t even supposed to be living upstairs, given he can’t really walk with his leg in a full cast, but no one has the heart to force him downstairs, and so Igraine patiently carries him up and down the stairs each day, wheelchair left downstairs and crutches in his room that give him enough mobility to at least get to and from the door.

 

Mavis also comes home, though admittedly with considerably much less fanfare, or any warning, for that matter. Lance supposes it’s appropriately Mavis fashion to just up and appear in the kitchen one morning, even if it nearly gives Lucas a heart attack coming down the stairs. She’s cut her hair, the long, thick mess of brown-black Lance remembers abandoned in favor of a sleek uneven bob, and the quiet, patterned dresses Lance has inherited from her have been traded in for tight jeans, heavy boots, and an oversized leather jacket. As distant as ever, Mavis sweeps in and tidies things up with barely a word, taking over organizing the funeral from Lance’s aunts without even blinking. She barely looks at Lance, for the most part, but every time he dozes off with Hunk he wakes up to fresh food waiting, clean clothes, and a dish with his pain medications waiting for him.

 

That’s pretty much how things are, until the funeral and its bright, cheerful sun. Lance doesn’t know what to do with himself, perched on a rigidly hard church pew with Josie in his lap. She’s getting bigger, just going on two now, but she’s oddly quiet, perhaps sensing the atmosphere around her. Lance had snatched her up on the first offer from Rachel to hold her, cuddling her to his chest and breathing in the smell of baby shampoo in her hair. She’s a solid weight against his body, grounding him and giving him something to focus on.

 

They’d opted for the small church cemetery across from the edge of the beach, one of a couple old ones dotted through the town. It’s a bit odd being in the church—they go as a family, of course, for holidays and important things. Christmas and Easter sermons and the like, and each of them were baptized here. It’s the only Catholic church in the town, so of course Lance knows it, but as much as his grandparents and mother hold to their faith, looking to it as a grounding point, their family, since coming to Veradera, has never been one for dedicated attendance to weekly services or anything like that. Lance’s mother once told him that she wants them to have that faith be there as an option for them if they so choose, but it is up to them to decide as they grow older whether they want that as a part of their lives.

 

Lance had never cared much either way, enjoying the singing at the services when they occasionally went simply because Loraine did, and not thinking much more of it beyond that. It’s a nice concept, he supposes, to picture a heaven for Loraine, because if anyone deserved that it was her, but he still can’t help wonder that, if there is a God, why he would take Loraine away from Lance and their family.

 

Still, when Marcie offers him the small silver cross Loraine had always worn under her shirt that was recovered from her body, Lance takes it gratefully, tucking it under his jacket and vowing to never be without it.

 

It’s still a piece of Loraine, after all.

 

Loraine’s jacket, too, is something Lance clings too. He’d come home from the hospital to find it washed and resting, folded neatly, on his bed. It’s still far too large on him, especially given it’d always been a little big on Loraine, but even washed it still smells like her, and when Lance closes his eyes he can picture her, smiling and alive, as she tucks the jacket around him, and so Lance rolls up the sleeves until his fingers just barely poke out, and refuses to take it off.

 

It’s something like a coping mechanism, he thinks, if he was really coping at all.

 

After the funeral, Karen resolves to stay, at least for a while, picking up a job teaching a summer soccer camp, while Mavis packs up and vanishes again within a couple days. She doesn’t speak much to anyone, tidying up a few last things and placing her bags by the door while Aunt Lupe trails behind her, asking her again and again if she’s _sure_ she won’t stay just for a little longer.

 

The last place she goes is Lance’s room, trailing in with a soft knock to alert him from where he’s perched on his bed. He scoots over enough to make room for her to sit next to him, and they sit together there in a comfortable silence.

 

“Aunt Rosa says you’re running away again.”

 

Mavis sighs out, a rueful, somewhat resigned sound tinged with the slightest traces of amusement, and Lance can’t help but stare, because he never quite understood Mavis when he was a young child, her quiet moments of silence seeming like a criticism in a home that thrived on noise, and she left before he could grow old enough to begin to recognize her behavior for what it was, let alone relate to it.

 

“I suppose one might put it like that.”

 

She’s odd edges and quick thoughts and quiet precision against a backdrop of people who live in a world of empty beaches and dirt-dusted pathways, running away to the city in search of a nameless _something_ she could just taste on the tip of her tongue.

 

Lance thinks of fever-dreams of stars and space, of crumpled Garrison applications and the speed of a hoverbike that is fast, but not quite fast enough, and decides perhaps he and Mavis are a little more alike than his eight-year-old self had thought.

 

“Do you like New York?”

 

Mavis shrugs. “It’s not…it’s not like _here_ , but it’s alright. There’s a namelessness to it, a rush of thousands of other people just trying to get by. You’re not a Sanchez, or a Paloma, or a McClain there, you’re just another immigrant child trying to prove to the world you’re worth some attention.”

 

“And that’s…good?”

 

She shrugs again, and Lance snorts, flopping against her side and closing his eyes when he feels her hand run through his hair. “…I used to have nightmares, about dying here without leaving this town and no one to know my name but my own relatives. Loraine did too, you know. I don’t know if you ever saw it, but she and I…I was only a few years older than her, and sometimes I was the one she came to, not Evie or Igraine or Marcie. She was a lot like me, in a way. She wanted out, to touch the stars and carve her name into the heavens.” Mavis pauses, and Lance listens to her steady breathing, head against her chest. “I shouldn’t have left, but I was afraid. I’m _still_ afraid. I want to do something people will remember, and unlike Loraine, I wasn’t selfless enough to give that up for the sake of the family.”

 

Lance sniffles, unable to help himself, and suddenly Mavis’s arms are around him, hugging him tightly.

 

“She loved you,” she grits out with icy conviction. “She loved you so, so much—more than anything in this world. She never regretted the choice to stay, not for one second, not when you were there to protect. You were her _world_ , Lance. I promise you, she was happy with what her life offered her, in the end, because of you.”

 

“B-But—“ Lance chokes. It feels like he’s drowning, being dragged under, and he doesn’t have the strength to stop it. “She shouldn’t have—she was better, so much better than I am. And now she’s gone, and all people are going to remember is how she died.”

 

“No,” Mavis says firmly, gripping Lance’s chin and forcing him to meet her eyes. “ _You_ are her legacy, Lance. _You_ are what she lived for. Not the stars, not the sky, _you_. So long as you’re still here, she has a legacy to remember, alright?”

 

Lance nods shakily, and she releases his face gently, leaning down and pressing a kiss to his forehead. “Good.” Carefully wiggling out from under Lance, she stands and turns to go, stopping just before she reaches the door. “Oh! Nearly forgot.” Opening the bag she’d left resting against the door, Mavis digs through, extracting something large, blue, and furry. Tossing it to Lance, he catches it on instinct alone, holding it out and blinking at it in confusion.

 

It’s a stuffed cat, with incredibly soft, gentle blue fur and bright yellow button eyes that stare up at Lance playfully. Lance doesn’t know why, but he’s suddenly hit with a wave of nostalgia, the bright cheerfulness of the toy reminding him achingly of Loraine, and he crushes it to his chest.

 

“Loraine helped me pick that out over the phone a couple months ago. Was supposed to be a birthday present. She said blue was still your favorite color, so…”

 

Lance grins in spite of himself, glancing up at his cousin and trying not to cry. “Thanks, Mavis.”

 

Mavis smirks, winking at him, then disappears around the corner of the door, gone once again without pause, as always.

 

 

xxx

 

 

The rest of that summer is seeped in silence as their whole family quietly, carefully, stitches themselves back together. There’s no replacing the tear Loraine’s loss has left, but they can at least do their best to hem it up. Lance remains in his room for the most part, watching out the window lethargically with Hunk until his leg heals up. Even once the cast is off, he doesn’t _really_ know what to do with himself.

 

He feels like he lost his voice with Loraine, and no longer knows how to talk and talk and _talk_ like he used to. Being around his family and all their noise all day is too loud.

 

Instead, he wanders, sometimes alone, sometimes with Hunk, fingers intertwined as they walk next to each other no matter who gives them an odd look because, right now, they both need that physical contact to ground them. Hunk still fusses over Lance, but he’s better about it now that Lance is no longer physically injured, and to a certain extent he seems burned out, the energy it took to be strong for Lance those first few weeks after the accident finally depleted.

 

They fall into quiet words and peaceful silence, but it’s alright, because they know each other well enough to be understood by the other with just a few simple touches and looks. It’s a language they shared only in part with Loraine, separate from the secret language she and Lance had shared between themselves, and now that she’s gone, they’re the only two left to speak it.

 

Lance spends a lot of time at the beach, perched out on the rocks and watching the surf crash against the most outward crops of the cliffs. He likes to go to the church too, to visit Loraine’s grave in its cemetery and trace his fingers along the name _Loraine Ophelia Eliza McClain_ carved into the stone and sit with his back to it, feeling as if he’s close to Loraine, here where the sounds of the ocean are close and the grass is beneath his fingers. He finds himself visiting the actual church itself more as well, enjoying the quiet noise of the sermons to fill the empty spaces in his mind, to sit and think of Loraine in the moments of silent prayer. He doesn’t take much stock in the religious aspects of it, as much as that sounds odd to say about a church, but he likes the atmosphere at least, and the priest is always nice enough to him. If anything, he finds his most spiritual moments back on the beach. There, he thinks, if there is a God or a power or a fate, is surely where it’d make its home—amongst the seagull cries and hot wind and cool saltwater.

 

It’s good for him, though, Lance thinks. He’s not over it, he’s never going to be over Loraine—how can you be over losing the other half of who you are, after all? But, he can learn to cover up his scars, to bandage up the shredded pieces of his soul and go back home so that he can be with his family as they all pretend to be alright. As much as he finds it suddenly overwhelming to be amongst them all the time, he doesn’t want to be alone. They’re still his sisters, his mother, his aunts, his uncle, cousins, and grandparents. They aren’t Loraine, no one will ever be what Loraine was to him, but Lance loves them.

 

He has his breaking moments, of course, the days where he buries himself in Loraine’s blankets and screams and screams and screams himself raw. The days where he locks himself in the bathroom and traces her name along his skin before he carves it along the patterns, until Marcie or Igraine breaks the door down and picks him up screaming and kicking and washes away the blood and bandages him up.

 

Their faces are always pale, after they find him like that, and Lance finds himself apologizing after each episode, wincing guiltily at their red eyes and tear-tracked cheeks even as they reassure him it’s fine.

 

He knows it’s not, but try as he might, Lance sometimes can’t stop himself. Sometimes…pain is all he has to feel alive again.

 

Mavis, of all people, becomes his confidant. She’s just a phone call away, after all, her number set into the contacts of the old beat-up phone he inherited from Loraine, and it’s…soothing, Lance thinks, to be able to talk to someone who _understands_ and is willing to listen, but isn’t there directly. He feels bad enough with the strain he’s putting on his siblings to try and dump his feelings onto them in a vomit of words as well, but Mavis, for whatever reason, doesn’t mind, patiently sitting through his rants and giving out quiet reason and reassurance in response.

 

If anyone had told Lance a few years ago that the family member he’d become the closest to is his quiet, repressed cousin, he wouldn’t have believed them. But, well…things changed. He changed. Loraine is gone, and Mavis is a peaceful, non-judgmental thrum holding him steady.

 

Sometimes, he’ll crawl out to the roof at night, phone clutched between wind-bitten fingers, and watch the stars he had always shared with Loraine, talking quietly with Mavis about all the things Loraine taught him, the blue cat Mavis had given him, which he’d never managed a more creative name for than _azul_ , hugged to his chest.

 

It feels good, to talk about all Loraine had given him, all the knowledge she’d imparted on him, and as the summer draws to a close, Lance comes to the conclusion that, more than anything, he wants that knowledge to be put to use. Loraine gave him the ticket to their shared fantasy of the stars and space, and it’s his responsibility to take it, for both himself and her. Loraine had given her life for him, surely the least he could do is live their dream.

 

The turning point comes when he’s going through some of Loraine’s old books, searching for a thick astronomy volume he’d wanted to re-read, a habit he’d picked up during the time he was waiting for his leg to heal. It's an old drawing on blue construction paper, tucked between two books Lance had pushed out of the way, shifted enough to slip free and fall to the floor, and when Lance opens it up, he finds an old child’s crayon scribble across the page, a little figure he can easily identify as Loraine standing and holding hands with a smaller figure Lance recognizes as himself, large, messy stars dotted around them.

 

 _Me + My Brother Lance,_ is scrawled along the bottom in large, childish handwriting, _by Loraine McClain, Age 9 and 1/2._

That night, after he’s wiped away the tear tracks and hidden away the drawing back in a safe place, Lance calls Mavis, ice in his veins, solid and unmoving.

 

“I want to go to the Garrison,” is what he says, choking out an incoherent mess of ramblings about stars and promises and dreams and _Loraine_ , and when he’s finished Mavis just sighs, resigned but willing.

 

“First things first, we need to get you out of that school you’re in. It’s not exactly high-class and while you’ve got the grades, your behavioral record will come back to bite your ass, never mind you going back to a place where you’re bullied is unacceptable.” She goes silent, and Lance can hear the clack of computer keys on her end of the line. “You need something that sets you up for guaranteed admission to the Garrison. There’s a private school in D.C., weekday boarding, home on the train on weekends if you choose, with good philanthropic scholarship programs going for underprivileged kids. They’re still taking admissions applications up until the start of the school year on a case-by-case basis. It’s competitive as hell, but you’ve got the grades and the brains to pass the admissions test.”

 

“Alright,” Lance says, biting back the fear he feels bubbling to the surface at the thought of _boarding schools_ and _admissions tests_. This… This is his way to his and Loraine’s dream, he has to take it. “I’ll do it.”

 

Mavis pauses, and exhales, a long, mournful sound. “Lance, if you go through with this, things…things will have to change. With a school like this, there’s no…Marcie and Evie can’t come rushing in to save you, they’ll just get rid of you if you piss off the wrong person.”

 

Lance swallows, hearing the unspoken message through the quiet words. “…I know.”

 

 

xxx

 

 

The next morning, he goes to Marcie and asks her to cut his hair.

 

She’s more than a little hesitant, but nonetheless agrees, and Lance sets himself up in front of the bathroom mirror, instructing her to make it _shorter,_ _c’mon Marcie shorter._

In the end, it’s a cut just long enough to give his hair enough length for its natural slight curl, layered and cut short down to the base of his neck, with longer bangs in the front that curve around his high forehead and in front of his ears to just above the edges of his jaw. It’s so different compared to anything Lance has had in years, to the point where he almost doesn’t recognize himself at the first glance in the mirror once Marcie’s finished. His curls, dancing above his shoulders and falling in front of his eyes, a perfect match for Loraine’s own cut, as was her intention, are gone.

 

It’s much shorter than anything Loraine had ever had in his memory period. A proper “boy’s” cut, just what Lance needs to pull this off.

 

He thinks once more of his _real_ hair, before the nightmare of that summer started, loose and free down to his hips in a mess of brown curls that he loved, and promptly buries the thought.

 

Once it’s over, he goes to his room and sorts out his clothes, packing away the tights and skirts and dresses, as well as any shirt or sweater in too “feminine” a color, and burying it all in the very back of his closet. Instead, he pulls off the dress he’s wearing, adding that to the pile of hidden clothing, and dresses himself again in an old baseball tee and jeans of Lucas’s, pushing the rest of the similarly styled clothing to the front.

 

After, he looks in the mirror, forcing himself to come to terms with the person he sees staring back. For Lance McClain to live and be what will get him to the stars, Lancie-Loo, the child of bare feet and long hair and pale blue summer dresses, needs to die.

 

So he takes the memory of what it means to be Loraine’s little Loo-Loo, and buries it with his old clothes.

 

He is Lance Alexander Rafael and he is what is left of Loraine Ophelia Eliza and he is a McClain and he is, above all, a _legacy_.

 

And so that is what he must become, no matter the cost.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Feel free to come talk to me about Lance, his boyfriend Keith, Voltron, or whatever over on on tumblr [here](http://pastel-clark.tumblr.com/) .


	5. Leap

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “You know, technically your legal guardian is supposed to do this.” Is what Evie finally says after a hesitant and hushed argument with Lance over the application. She doesn’t like it, as Lance expected, and she emphasizes that even after he’s convinced her to open up the online application, but Lance has the same immovable stubbornness he shared with Loraine, and eventually he wears her down.
> 
>  
> 
> “Mamá would never agree.” Lance says— And she wouldn’t, he knows. Either out of fear or worry about how it might affect him if he didn’t get in or didn’t get a scholarship. Their mother has always encouraged them to reach for their dreams, while also being practical enough to never lie about their financial situation with them, but losing Loraine has changed her. She clings more to her children, despite the girls all being adults now, and especially to Lance, her youngest and, in many ways, the closest thing they have to Loraine left.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

>  _From the Chat Logs:_  
>  [11/17/16, 5:32:51 AM] H.P. Clark: Someone convince me not to put song lyrics in my chap update like a 14 year old writing their first badly formatted fanfic  
> [11/17/16, 5:33:00 AM] H.P. Clark: ....fuck it I'm doing it  
> [11/17/16, 5:34:06 AM] Mossy: Do it do it do it
> 
>  
> 
> Heyyy new chapter!
> 
> This was originally going to be half of one update, but I ended up splitting it to save myself some sanity. I've done 10k word chapters before and they're draining as hell, especially when you're writing multiple fics.
> 
> That said, enjoy this. This was a kind of fun chapter to write as I got to explore more of the McClain sisters' personalities, particularly Evie's, which is part of why it became longer than expected. I've noticed a lot of comments about when Keith will show up, so I just want to assure you all it will be soon! He's definitely getting his first mentions next chapter if all goes according to plan, and if so he'll become a proper character the chapter after that.
> 
> I've also had a comment or two about tagging this as slow burn because of the lack of immediate Keith, and so I wanted to ask, given this is also tagged as a Lance backstory, if people would like me to also tag it as that? I don't really think of this as slow burn. but. up to y'all.

Greenwood Academy is a proper-type private city school—wide decorative doors at the grand entrance, a matching set of large brick buildings looming above the street, and a high iron fence surrounding a small courtyard sanctioned between the buildings, all tucked into its own neat little mini-campus on the edge of the city proper.

 

The first time Lance lays eyes on it, he really doesn’t know what to think. It’s nice enough, he supposes, from an outsider’s perspective. He can acknowledge it’s visually appealing, pretty and austere in its appearance, but he doesn’t know if that would necessarily make it _endearing,_ as such, to him. Then again, the idea of this, _anywhere_ , but Veradera being home is such a foreign concept.

 

Admittedly, in this case that situation would only apply to during the school week, but the same basic idea remains.

 

To Lance, it’s like leaving the bubble of a world that has been his entire life, one that had always been safe and secure until it had suddenly popped and left him choking for air.

 

Veradera is home, but it is also _Loraine_ , and she herself is… _was_ home, and Lance is still trying to reconcile what this new life without her means.

 

Lance first visits Greenwood Academy when he comes for his admissions testing. After Mavis mentions it to him, she emails him the school website, and Lance then takes it to Evie, both because he knows she’s the least likely to fight him on it with her passive temperament and because she has the monopoly on access to the computer Lance and his siblings use. Admittedly, Marcie has her own old beat-up laptop she happily lets her baby siblings use when Evie’s working on the desktop, but between the two options Lance likes his chances of talking Evie into this over Marcie, who mothers him far too much to go along with something like this.

 

“You know, technically your legal guardian is supposed to do this,” is what Evie finally says after a hesitant and hushed argument with Lance over the application. She doesn’t like it, as Lance expected, and she emphasizes that even after he’s convinced her to open up the online application, but Lance has the same immovable stubbornness he shared with Loraine, and eventually he wears her down.

 

“Mamá would never agree.” Lance says—and she wouldn’t, he knows. Either out of fear or worry about how it might affect him if he didn’t get in or didn’t get a scholarship. Their mother has always encouraged them to reach for their dreams, while also being practical enough to never lie about their financial situation with them, but losing Loraine has changed her. She clings more to her children, despite the girls all being adults now, and especially to Lance, her youngest and, in many ways, the closest thing they have to Loraine left.

 

Marcie said once, after their mother became so clingy to Lance, that it wasn’t fair for him to be forced into Loraine’s shadow like this, but Lance doesn’t really have the heart to agree with her. He doesn’t think this is healthy for their Mamá, no, and wishes she’d stop if only for that, but the comment about being Loraine’s shadow doesn’t bother him either. In a way, it makes him glad. He is infused with Loraine, her mark on the world. So long as he is here, she will not be forgotten either.

 

Regardless, going to his mother about this is a moot point. Lance had considered asking Marcie, who, after their mother first got sick, had herself registered as a secondary legal guardian for Lance and Loraine, but had opted not to for the same reasons he chose not to use her laptop.

 

“Besides,” Lance says to Evie, voice syrup-sweet, “I know you’re smart enough to fake the details to make it seem like Mamá registered me.”

 

“Well, yes…” A pleased blush scrawls across Evie’s heavily freckled cheeks, and Lance grins, knowing his sweet talk has done the trick. “But what are you going to do if you actually get into this thing?”

 

Lance shrugs. “If I don’t get a scholarship, I turn it down I guess.”

 

“And if you do?”

 

“ _Then_ I go to Mamá or Marcie about it. Convince one, get them to convince the other. Or something. If I’ve already gotten in, they’re unlikely to refuse.”

 

Evie whistles, fingers flying over the computer keys as she fills out the last of the forms. “When did you get so manipulative?”

 

He grins. “I have to start growing into my shadow.”

 

Evie raises an eyebrow at the phrasing but says nothing, only scrolling down to the bottom of the computer screen, cursor hovering over the _submit_ button. “You sure about this?”

 

Lance leans over and clicks the mouse for her.

 

“Yeah, I am.”

 

xxx

 

 

The one factor Lance doesn’t consider is Hunk.

 

Hunk, who finds the links Mavis sent him while playing on Lance’s phone, because he knows the password and is a nosy bastard, while Lance reads as they sit on his bed together. Hunk, who asks him about them with wide eyes and furrowed eyebrows, and Lance, powerless to lie to his best friend, spills out everything—the plan, the application, Evie’s help, leaving Hunk staring at him blankly once he’s done.

 

“…Hunk?” he asks, carefully prodding the other. “You’re…not mad, are you? Buddy?”

 

As far as Lance knows, Hunk doesn’t have an angry bone in his body. At least, not any that ever get angry at Lance, so he’s fairly, _hopefully_ confident that this isn’t the case here.

 

He’s _definitely_ isn’t expecting the light slap across his face.

 

Lance screeches, reeling back and clutching his cheek. It doesn’t hurt, Hunk would never hit him hard enough for that, but he’s still shocked. “What the hell?”

 

“Language,” Hunk huffs out, turning away from him and crossing his arms, and Lance rolls his eyes. He grew up in a house full of teenagers and young adults in their twenties—he knows plenty of swears, in a variety of languages. He’s pretty sure he heard Evie cuss the computer out in Russian once, though where she’d learn Russian swears he really has no clue.

 

After a moment, he notices Hunk still hasn’t said anything else, facing away from him and shoulders shaking lightly. “…Hunk?” Gently, Lance reaches out and touches Hunk’s shoulder, paling as Hunk turns back to face him with a mess of tears down his face, nose red as he sniffles rather loudly.

 

Hunk’s always been a messy crier, and something about it breaks what’s left of Lance’s roughly reconstructed heart.

 

“You _jerk,”_ Hunk sobs, wiping at his face clumsily. “You were just going to do this and take off without even telling me beforehand?”

 

“I…didn’t want you involved,” Lance says, reaching out to Hunk, who shrinks away again.

 

“Why? Why don’t you want me around anymore?!”

 

“Hunk, that’s not…” Lance lets out a startled laugh, quickly stopping when Hunk glares at him. “Sorry, it’s just…it’s not _that_. I don’t want you to leave! The idea of you not being here is _terrifying._ You’re my best friend, my _only_ friend.”

 

Hunk sniffles. “Then why didn’t you at least tell me?”

 

Lance sighs. “Because I’m not going to change my mind about this. I _have_ to do it, and I knew if you tried to talk me out of it it’d only hurt both of us more.”

 

“Oh…” Hunk frowns down at the bedspread before wiggling over slightly so he’s sitting a little closer to Lance again. “Well, you should have just said _that._ I’ll come with you.”

 

Lance’s heart sinks. _This_ was the other reason he hadn’t said anything to Hunk. “I don’t want you to be dragged into this out of some sense of duty. I can take care of myself. You deserve to make your own choices.”

 

Hunk huffs, throwing an arm over Lance’s shoulders and pulling him into his side. “You idiot. This _is_ my choice. I’ll apply to this school with you. Where…where am I going to go if not with you? I need you too, you know.”

 

“Oh…” Lance feels a wobbly smile climb its way onto his face, and quietly buries his face into Hunk’s shirt, curling into the large warmth of the other. “Alright then.”

 

Hunk snorts, resting his head on top of Lance’s. “See? Not that hard.” He pauses, tensing slightly. “…Sorry for hitting you.”

 

“Hunk that was barely a slap. You’ve given me hugs more painful than that.”

 

“…Shut up.”

 

Lance laughs, and after a moment Hunk joins him, falling back into the bed as they giggle.

 

The next day they corner Evie at the computer and stare at her with begging eyes and trembling pouts until she sighs and pulls up the website for Greenwood again. “If your grandmother wants to know how you got registered for this without her, Hunk, I’m not taking the fall. It’ll be your problem, _verdad_?”

 

Hunk pales, and Lance cackles.

 

 

xxx

 

 

Two weeks later, Lance finds himself curled up against Hunk’s side on the train to D.C., idly fiddling with his phone while an overly nervous Evie sits on his other side, fidgeting quietly and eyes darting around the train car at the other passengers.

 

Originally, Lance had just figured he and Hunk would find some excuse to sneak out for the day with some "borrowed" money and then get on the train to the capital themselves. However, Evie had apparently eventually realized that to complete an application test for a school in D.C., the two of them would actually need to go to the city, and had burst into Lance’s room a couple days ago demanding to know exactly how Lance and Hunk planned to get there.

 

Really, Lance should have figured she’d freak when he told her his vague plan.

 

“You can’t take the train by yourselves! You’re _eleven_!” she’d screeched, looking close to tearing her hair out as she paced around the room, waving her arms.

 

“I’m twelve, actually. Lance is the baby,” Hunk had murmured from next to Lance, who elbowed him in retribution.

 

“Then you’ll just have to go with us.”

 

Lance had never known Evie to pale in terror so quickly, despite the numerous occasions he’d witnessed it.

 

“What?!”

 

“Well, you’re the only one who knows, and you promised not to tell. So it’s either we go alone or you come with us, I guess,” Lance had said, shrugging. Admittedly he didn’t like using Evie’s fears of crowds against her like this in the slightest, but she was the only one he could have entrusted this secret to, which didn’t leave many options. He wasn’t about to risk ruining this by asking one of his other sisters to take them.

 

“…Alright.” Lance looked up in surprise. “I’ll do it. You’re right, I did promise, but you’re not going alone. You’ve never even been to D.C. before.”

 

And so, Evie ended up on the train as well, anxiously twitching but firm in her resolve to stick with them. Looking up, Lance watches her fingers tap against her thigh in an irregular rhythm before reaching out and grabbing her hand with his own, squeezing lightly.

 

“Thank you,” he says quietly, mindful of the sleeping Hunk on his other side. “You’re a great big sister.”

 

Evie relaxes minutely, a small smile tugging at the edge of her lips. “You’re welcome.”

 

Nodding, Lance glances back down at his phone as it buzzes, a message from Mavis lighting up the screen.

 

_Nervous?_

_A little._ He texts back. It’d be nice if he had something else to focus on, something soothing. Idly, he remembers the soft echoes of a violin and a melodic voice spilling out from a closed door that he and Loraine sometimes sat with their backs to, tucked in next to each other sleepily and shushing each other’s yawns, knowing if they got caught listening the pretty sounds would stop. _…Do you have any of your music on your phone? I need something to distract me._

_I have some song files from some orchestras and bands I could send you?_

_No._ Lance writes, frowning lightly. **_Your_** _music._

There’s a pause, and Lance wonders if he’s crossed a line.

 

_…I have one cover I did last week to blow off some steam._

_Please._ Lance types, and feels a grin stretch across his face as, after a moment, a small file pings into his messages box. Pulling out his headphones, Lance plugs them in and clicks on the file.

 

 _“Send us a blindfold, send us a blade,”_ Mavis’s soft voice whispers through the speakers, the quiet strains of a piano playing beneath her words. “ _Tell the survivors help is on the way.”_

Lance leans back, closing his eyes as the music plays, focusing on the soft notes and the pull of a voice that sounds like safety.

 

_“What it is and where it stops, nobody knows.”_

xxx

 

 

Lance gets his letter of acceptance two weeks after the application test.

 

Really, the test was fairly easy, Lance had felt. It was certainly more interesting than the ones at school, but he’d still blown through it without worry, flying through the spelling and English questions and barely hesitating with the math. He’d spent half the time sharing amused glances with Hunk from where the other was taking the test at his own desk from across the room, and they easily were two of the first few students to finish, passing back their booklets with matching grins for the bemused-looking test administrator.

 

The more intimidating part had been the interview, a portion Lance had known was a requirement for students applying under the scholarship program but had been less than enthused about. A test was easy—yes or no answers, use your logic, fill in the bubbles. There isn’t subjectivity when it comes to a test like that.

 

Interviews, though…interviews are about personality and appeal, selling yourself. This was where the practice came, the act. Steps across fragile ice with a need to intuitively sense where the cracks you will fall through will be.

 

And so Lance had copied what he knew—Marcie’s disarming smile, Igraine’s bubbly humor, Karen’s friendly voice, Lucas’s social charm.

 

What does he like to do? Reading, soccer, boy things, smart things.

 

He likes to read? Yes. Nonfiction. He’s interested in reading about space exploration.

 

He buries the rest—the long skirts and braids and bare feet, the taste of the salty beach air and cheap popsicles sitting on the back of _león_ on a hot summer’s day, the poorly-written romance novellas piled up on a bedside table and the carefully looked after assortment of flavored lip gloss.

 

He is not Lancie Loo-Loo anymore.

 

This is a part to play, an agreement to conform in exchange for the benefits. Act. Perform.

 

Make the trade. Get the scholarship.

 

And he does—in a thick letter with his name on the front offering him a seat at the Greenwood Academy of the District of Columbia for the upcoming school year on full philanthropic scholarship, laid out on his bed across from Hunk’s matching one, grins wide as they sit cross-legged on the bed, Evie tucked between them. She screams when she sees the letters, dropping kisses onto their cheeks and foreheads and pulling them both close into her sides, an arm around each of their shoulders, with excited whispers of “I knew you could do it! I knew!”

 

Hunk’s eyes are wide and dazed when he meets Lance’s gaze from around Evie’s thick mess of hair as she hugs them, and Lance can’t help but smile in turn, trying his best to ignore the prick of tears at the corners of his eyes as he grabs at the hood of Loraine’s jacket and pulls it lower over his head.

 

They did it; they really, truly did it.

 

He’s one step closer to the Garrison, to the stars. To every promise he and Loraine shared.

 

“…Wait,” Evie’s voice says after a long moment, sinking realization in every syllable. “…Who’s going to tell Mamá and Marcie?”

 

 

xxx

 

 

“…You did _what?!_ ”

 

Marcie’s voice is a rising crescendo, eyes wide and arms frozen where they still half hold up the book she had been reading. Karen is equally still; hands paused mid-stitch where she had been sitting knitting next to Marcie on the sofa. Lance grins awkwardly from his position at the front of the room right next to the fireplace, his two co-conspirators hovering behind him.

 

They’d purposefully opted to tell the rest of the family at a time when they knew everyone would be together, in order to save time and limit the number of individual arguments about the affair. It was hardly difficult—their family often spent Sunday nights together by some unspoken suggestion, even more frequently during the summer, and it had only taken a couple well-placed words from Lance and Hunk to see Hunk’s grandmother had been invited over for Sunday night dinner, as she almost always was. The result had been just what Lance had intended, a full sitting room conveniently containing all the necessary parties: Marcie and Karen curled up on the sofa, Igraine and Lucas stretched out on the floor resting their backs on the base of the sofa with a magazine shared between them, his mother and aunts crowded around the corner table playing cards while his uncle idly reviewed some invoices from work next to them, and his grandparents and Hunk’s grandmother perched in the circle of armchairs they had long ago claimed as their own for their gossip sessions.

 

Admittedly, Carlos, Rachel, and Josie were absent, back at their own home for the night, but minus one cousin and company, Lance thought this was a pretty good gathering.

 

Or at least, he did until he had eleven sets of eyes staring at him accusingly following his little admission about the Greenwood Academy application.

 

“I got accepted into a private boarding school in D.C., Hunk too,” Lance says again, as calmly as he can. “Full scholarships. It’s a philanthropic program for underprivileged kids or something, covers tuition, boarding, uniforms, everything. Classes start mid-September.”

 

“Wait, wait—“ Karen says after a moment, once it becomes clear both Marcie and their mother are too shell-shocked to say anything. “How the hell did you even apply without telling anyone? Don’t you need a parent’s permission?”

 

From slightly behind Lance, Evie gives a tiny, guilty wave.

 

“Evie you faked Ma’s and Abuela Garrett’s info?” Igraine whistles, sounding weirdly impressed. “Holy shit. Little baby bird’s coming out of her shell!”

 

Lance grins in pride at the acknowledgement of his sister’s uncharacteristic bravery. “She took us on the train for the admissions testing too.”

 

Igraine’s jaw drops. “No. Effing. Way.”

 

“Never mind that!” Marcie snaps, seemingly regaining her voice. “Lance, Hunk, what on earth possessed you two to do such a thing?! And Evie why would you agree to help?!”

 

Evie flushes in shame, ducking her head, and Lance deliberately steps in front of her, crossing his arms and glaring. “It’s not her fault! I talked her into it! I—“ He bites his lip, hesitating. “I want into the Garrison program. It was Loraine’s dream and she gave it up when Mamá got sick so now it’s mine. This school’s a ticket into that. Hunk…” He glances at his best friend, shrugging. “Hunk just came along for the ride.”

 

“…Loraine was going to apply to the Galaxy Garrison?” Igraine’s eyes are wide, and Lance feels his heart sink.

 

“…She never told you.”

 

There’s a collective shaking of heads, and after a pause, Marcie’s voice speaks quietly. “She was…always closest with you, from the moment you were born, Lance. There’s probably things you know about her no one else does.”

 

 _Of course there are,_ Lance wants to say. _We were two halves of a whole._

Instead, he closes his eyes, ignoring the hollow ache in his chest.

 

“…I knew,” Evie offers hesitantly. “I found her hiding place for the application forms on accident. I didn’t mention it because I figured she’d…tell us when she was ready. When she never said anything about it, I assumed she’d just changed her mind.”

 

Lance blinks, surprised for all but a second before another realization hits him. “Mavis knew too.” He’d talked to her at least dozen times about Loraine and the Garrison and she’d never offered any confusion or asked for an explanation, she had to have known ahead of time.

 

From the ground, Lucas snorts loudly, getting a few raised eyebrows. “She’s Mavis. She knows _everything._ ”

 

“That’s your baby sister you’re talking about, _mijo,_ ” Aunt Lupe says, sounding mildly amused despite her reprimanding words.

 

“Yeah, Ma, she is, and I love her, but she’s also creepily omniscient, even all the way from New York,” Lucas mutters, rolling his eyes.

 

Hunk’s grandmother coughs quietly. “Not to interrupt, but perhaps we should be more focused on the fact that Lance and my grandson appear to have been accepted to a private school in the capital without any of our pervious knowledge, no?” Lance winces, wondering for a moment if she’s angry for dragging Hunk into this mess, but when she looks back at him she winks, eyes filled with the same homely warmth Lance knows Hunk must have gotten from her.

 

“Alright, alright,” Marcie says, rubbing at her temples. “So just to recap, you secretly applied to a private school with Evie’s help without telling anyone else, were accepted to said school on scholarships, and are only just now asking permission to go?”

 

“…Yes?” Hunk says meekly from next to Lance, futilely trying to hide behind him despite the good half foot of height difference between them.

 

Marcie scowls. “Are you-“

 

“Lance,” Their mother says quietly, cutting off Marcie. “Are you sure this is what you really want?” Her dark eyes hold a kind of murky sadness that makes Lance want to go and curl up in her lap and let her hold him like she did when he was little, but there’s also a stubborn set to her jaw all her children, Lance included, inherited from her that says she will accept whatever his answer is without argument.

 

“…Yes, Mamá,” Lance sighs. “It is.”

 

She nods shakily. “Then that’s settled.” She glances at Hunk, raising an eyebrow. “Hunk?”

 

Hunk pales slightly, glancing over at his grandmother, who chuckles. “I’ve always assumed you’d go where Lance does, dear. You’ve got a heart for adventure I never did that pairs the two of you together well. I’m all for it if it makes you happy.”

 

“Wait, seriously?” Marcie’s voice is incredulous, eyes wide. “That’s it? We’re just…shipping them off to boarding school?”

 

“It’s only D.C.,” Igraine says calmly. “They’re, what? An hour or so away by train or car, if that? I could probably do it in forty minutes on my bike if I ignored stoplights.”

 

“It’s only weekday mandatory boarding,” Hunk offers quietly. “We could come home every Friday afternoon and stay till Sunday…”

 

Marcie frowns, and next to her Karen shakes her head. “You’re eleven and twelve, I’m not keen on putting you on a train to and from D.C. every week on your own, and we don’t really have anyone who can take the time off work to come and get you…”

 

“…I can,” Evie says suddenly, and Lance spins around in surprise, staring at his sister.

 

“For real? But you hate the train!”

 

She shrugs. “I work from home, what’s a couple hours out of my day on the train and back if it means you two get to come home? I can work on my phone if I need to.”

 

Lance can’t help the wide grin that stretches across his face, leaping forward and hugging Evie as tightly as he can. “Thank you. Thank you so much.”

 

“Of course,” she whispers, dropping a kiss into his hair. “Anything for my baby brother.”

 

“Wow _Genevieve,"_  Igraine says, sounding distinctly amused. “You’re becoming a real adult, huh?”

 

Lance hears Evie huff a laugh, her arms tightening around him. “Shut up.”

 

“So that’s it then?” comes Aunt Rosa’s voice, laughter bleeding into her words.

 

“I guess?” Marcie says bemusedly, huffing. “Alright! I guess we’re doing this! Let’s just hope it doesn’t go up in flames.”

 

“Thanks for the vote of confidence, Marcie,” Lance mutters, and above him, Evie snickers loudly. Pressing his face into her chest to hide a private smile, Lance closes his eyes properly and savors the warmth around him, the familiar smells, the voices he has heard his entire life.

 

No matter what, this is still home.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hunk's Grandma is chill as hell and I love her.
> 
> For those that are curious, the lines Mavis was singing come from [a very lovely song called Blindness](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=spqgpkobEh4), which I find really suiting to Lance as well as his budding closer friendship with his cousin.
> 
> Feel free to come talk to me about Lance, his boyfriend Keith, Voltron, or whatever over on on tumblr [here](http://pastel-clark.tumblr.com/) .


	6. Live

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sometimes, he wonders if this is what the oceans might feel like, if someone came along and placed blocks between them, severing Pacific and Indian and Artic. That’s not the way things are meant to be, he thinks. Water is meant to intermingle and run together. You can’t take one piece of water and say it is different from another, when they are meant to be one.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Heyo, new year, new update!
> 
> This wasn't originally going to be its own full chapter, but after doing the math on length and having just suffered through writing a 15k update for another fic (I'm serious, I did that, kill me), I decided to split the planned chapter up. Hence this. Now, before anyone asks, a lot of you have been asking about Keith, so I'll just say this-- They meet when Lance is 15. He's 11 now. How fast we get to Keith depends on how much of the next 4, Very Important, I'll add, years of Lance's life I cover, so please be patient, k? You'll get Keith in a chapter or two.
> 
> And!! Before we begin!! This fic has its own first piece of fanart!! I've been told it's a WIP, but it's still amazing so I have to show it off-- So everyone go check out Peachlance's [gorgeous art of young Hunk and Lance](http://peachlance.tumblr.com/post/155150167512/wip-of-a-piece-im-doing-for-pastel-clarks-story). It's beautiful. I yelled in the middle of an airport when I saw it.  
> (BTW if anyone ever does fanart for this fic and I miss it because it's on another site or whatever, please tell me in a comment on this fic or an ask to my tumblr with the link, I'd hate to miss it!!)
> 
> Also!! I'm on [ Twitter](https://twitter.com/hpClarkster) now since there seems to be a significant portion of the Voltron fandom that prefers that to Tumblr. I don't post a ton on it, but I'll be putting out update notifications from now on, so if you want those and my all-caps tweets yelling at Aiden, my irl Keith friend, feel free to follow me, yeah?
> 
> Ok that's it you can ignore me now here's Lance have fun y'all.

Come September, Lance and Hunk pack their bags and move into the dormitories at Greenwood, accompanied by their moving team of the entire McClain family, plus Hunk’s grandmother—the whole lot of them piling into the old family jeep and pickup truck and Hunk’s grandmother’s tiny, ancient Toyota with an assortment of random things they’re each separately convinced Lance and Hunk are going to need.

 

Lance imagines they make quite the sight, pulling up to the pristine parking spaces outside the Greenwood buildings and piling out of the cars in a haphazard mess of long limbs and a loud mix of Spanish and English that blends together into a background noise that is comforting in its familiarity against the apprehensive mystery that is Greenwood. They certainly do get their fair share of stares as they cram into the entry building for student check-in, confirming that, yes, they are _indeed_ all relatives, and are here to help Lance and Hunk move in.

 

Honestly, Lance has to admit they’re all pretty restrained, all things considered. Everyone knows how important this is to him, and to Hunk, in his own way, and his family is hardly inclined to mess this up for them, so there’s a fair degree of…what Lance might dare call caution in their behavior. They’re loud, and talkative, and move around a lot, because they’re McClains and that’s what they do when they move as a pack, but Karen doesn’t try to play soccer in the dorm hall, Igraine doesn’t punch anyone, even Marcie restrains herself from commenting loudly on the hairstyle choices of the people around them.

 

…Ok, yeah, she whispers a few comments under her breath to Lance, but that was still a marked effort on her part, and she was _right_ that one guy’s undercut had been so sloppily done it was painful to look at, even Lance could agree on that.

 

Karen hadn’t seen anything wrong with it but, then again, that was Karen, who’s thought processes concerning her hair began and ended at where the nearest scrunchie was to pull it up into its perpetual bushy ponytail, much to Marcie and Lance’s horror.

 

If anything though, Lance thinks they just get odd looks because they’re…them. A large, loud, Cuban family who clearly don’t have the money to be here, let alone the pedigree.

 

“Fuck 'em,” Igraine mutters firmly under her breath the first time a mother helping her son with his bags scoffs at them when they pass by in the dormitory hall. “You’ve earned your right to be here. At least you didn’t _buy_ your way in.”

 

 _“Igraine,”_ Aunt Rosa snaps, slapping her on the arm, and Lance snorts loudly, earning a victorious smirk from his sister even as she whines and cradles her arm as if it’s now broken. The burst of noise only earns them more side-eyes from the people in the hall, and Lance ducks his head sheepishly, scratching at the back of it nervously. He’s still not used to his short hair, really, and when he’s anxious he tends to find it feels quite itchy. At least the bangs that frame his face are just long enough to play with and twirl with his fingers. He thinks he’d lose his mind otherwise, far too used to having long curls to twirl and braid and tie into loose knots when he gets fidgety—honestly, he has no idea what he’s gonna do in class now to keep his hands busy.

 

Eventually, they get all the boxes into his and Hunk’s room (and thank God for that little blessing, Lance doesn’t know how he’d function if they hadn’t been allowed to pre-choose their roommates), stacked up along the walls and all over the floor. Frankly, it seems like far more than the two of them will need to Lance, especially given they barely live an hour or so away, but a good portion of the boxes are things he can identify as not having packed himself, snuck in amongst all their other belongings, no doubt random pieces of junk his family has decided they require. Lance wouldn’t be surprised if he found something as random as a paper towel dispenser or half-empty bottles of shampoo, honestly. Knowing his family, it’s far too likely. He still remembers with a kind of abject horror the mess that was Carlos and Rachel moving into their new house.

 

It’s…different, bringing all his things in here and trying to make it a living space. Lance has only had one room his entire life, and if he ever slept in another room in the house, it had always been with Loraine. But…Loraine isn’t here anymore, and this is not his house.

 

Luckily, the adults largely take over once they get everything in, rearranging the school-provided furniture, getting the beds made with sheets and quilts and extra pillows, and unpacking the heaviest books. It only takes about ten minutes before Uncle Jesús, Lucas, Igraine, and Lance’s grandfather are kicked out of the room under orders to go get food for everyone, once it quickly becomes clear Lance and Hunk’s dorm room is _not_ large enough to have all of them milling around in it. As it is, they still barely fit, shuffling past each other and ducking out into the hall as they work to make room. It’s a mess, but…nice. Lance is going to miss not being around his family every day, and so the squished hustle of it all is something he chooses to savor rather than be frustrated with.

 

When it comes time for families to leave, the extended visiting hours for the move-in day coming to an end once night falls, it’s a long, drawn-out procession of goodbyes. Lance has to patiently remind his mother and sisters that he’ll see them all again come the weekend, but even while reassuring them, he himself can’t help but cling to them tightly when they embrace him, memorizing his mother’s warmth, Marcie’s fruity smell, Karen’s chapped lips when she kisses the side of his head, the sharp dig of Igraine’s multiple ear piercings against his cheek when she hugs him tight. Each of them distinct in the little things that mark them as who they are—Marcie and her guiding softness, Karen’s grounding reassurance, Igraine’s fire, Evie’s quick wit.

 

His sisters.

 

…And Lance, the shadow to the all-encompassing, insurmountable ocean.

 

 

xxx

 

 

“Are these…christmas lights. Yep, they’re Christmas lights.” Lance glances up at Hunk’s bewildered words, and snorts loudly, shaking his head in slight disbelief. Even with their families’ help, there’d still been plenty left to unpack once they left, and apparently they were hitting the boxes of weird stuff now.

 

“Just throw them on one of the desks for now,” Lance says dismissively, turning back to his own box, while Hunk bemusedly gathers up the lights in his arms and stares at them.

 

“…We could string them up along the ceiling? Like college students do in the movies?”

 

“Wouldn’t that be a safety code violation?” Lance asks, unfolding the flaps on the box in front of him and blinking in surprise. “… _Why_.”

 

“What?” Hunk says, frowning, and Lance sighs, straightening up and pulling out the large Cuban flag he’d found stuffed in the top of the box.

 

“I bet my abuelita put it in—she does realize I was born in the U.S., right?”

 

“Maybe she just wants you to be proud of your heritage. It’s a good thing.” Hunk says mildly, and Lance rolls his eyes.

 

“Yeah, okay, come talk to me when _you_ find your giant New Zealand flag then.”

 

“Actually…” Reaching into the new box he’s just opened, Hunk pulls out a miniature New Zealand flag on a stick and waves it back and forth. “It seems my grandmother had a similar thought pattern.” Idly, he peers into the box. “…Oh look there’s an All Blacks flag there too.”

 

“ _Jesus_.”

 

“He’s over there,” Hunk says, pointing at the crucifix sitting on Lance’s bedside table, also a gift from his grandmother, Lance suspects.

 

Lance grabs the pillow off his bed closest to him and chucks it at Hunk’s head.

 

Hunk dodges easily, not even sparing Lance a look as he pulls a few books out of the box and sets them on his desk. Lance huffs in irritation and chucks the flag onto the edge of his bed to deal with later, emptying the rest of the box to find…yarn, lots and lots of yarn.

 

Wincing, he runs a hand over the closest ball, a light pink that’s soft to the touch. He’d learned to knit from Marcie, who’d in turn learned from their grandmother, as something to do with his hands when he was feeling overly fidgety. It had been nice, something he enjoyed, even if he’d mostly only made scarves and blankets, but since Loraine’s death he hadn’t touched his knitting needles, the whole activity too drenched in memories of being tucked up on Loraine’s bed with her watching a movie as he moves the yarn through his fingers.

 

He gives it a moment of hesitation, and then folds the box shut and pushes it under his bed.

 

Knitting’s probably not a normal boy’s thing anyways.

 

“Hey help me with this box.” Lance startles, standing up and going over to where Hunk is standing next to a large box, helping him push it into the spot they’d cleared for emptying and sorting boxes and cutting the tape on the top. Hunk opens the flaps and reaches in, pulling out a mess of fabric. “Clothes. Guess we missed a box earlier. Looks like these are all yours.” Lance takes the bundle of shirts from Hunk and opens a dresser drawer, dropping them in before moving onto the next handful. They’re all plain or with simple logos, old things he’d gotten from Lucas and Carlos, a few of Karen’s old things when she wore more masculine clothing for a while when she was younger. He’d purposely made sure to leave out all the old floral-patterned tops and frilly blouses along with the other clothing hidden in the back of his closet when he’d picked out what to pack— he hadn’t needed too many clothes, anyways, since the school had uniforms. This was mostly just for lounging around the dorm or days when casual wear was permitted.

 

Out of the corner of his eye, he sees Hunk reach for something in the box, pulling out an old grey shirt and staring at it, brows furrowed and a question clearly on the tip of his tongue. Before he can say anything, Lance quickly snatches the shirt out of his grasp, throwing it in the drawer with the rest of the clothing and shutting it firmly, ignoring Hunk’s questioning eyes even as they follow him as he folds up the now empty box and drops it into the pile with its brethren in the corner.

 

He knows Hunk has noticed the change in his clothing, his mannerisms, as distinct as his hair, but he’s not ready for the questions yet.

 

…He’s not yet come up with an answer.

 

“How many boxes do we have left?” he asks pointedly, kicking the pile of empty boxes into a more reasonable shape.

 

“Oh! Uh…” Hunk startles, and glancing back Lance watches him peer around the room. “Nine or ten? We’ve gotten all the big ones, we could always do the rest tomorrow after orientation.”

 

Lance frowns. “If you’re tired, you can sleep now. I want to finish tonight so we don’t have to worry.”

 

He’s too jittery to sleep, honestly. Nerves and fears and excitement about being away from Veradera, from _home_ , but being _here_ , colliding together in a mess of emotion and displaced energy. Hunk hesitates, shaking his head, and Lance can tell he feels much the same.

 

“Nah, let’s just…get it all done tonight.”

 

Lance nods, grabbing a box off the stack and passing it to Hunk before grabbing one himself, setting it on top of his bed and opening it up. Once he gets the flaps on the top open, though, he freezes, feeling ice trickle through his veins and under his skin as he stares down at the box. “… _Dammit_ , Marcie.”

 

“What’s wrong?” Hunk asks behind him, and Lance jolts.

 

“Nothing. Just...stuff I told her not to pack that she put in anyways.”

 

In the box sits the things Marcie and Lance had bonded over for years, the skills she had taught him—the child-size makeup case she’d given him, filled with bottles of tacky nail polish in bright, sparkly colors, the lip gloss set Mavis had sent him along with others his sisters had gifted him, a couple old, thick pen eyeliners Igraine had given him, a cheap set of cheerful eye-shadows Carlos had bought him from the dollar store as a present last year. Next to the makeup case is the little box of hair ribbons he used to use, and with a pang of hurt at the sight, Lance wonders why Marcie would even put those in. He cut his hair. It’s done, no changing it.

 

It’s _done_.

 

That Lance—Lancie, Loo-Loo, _whatever_ , whatever he was, is nothing now. Just a pile of memories buried away with his old clothes in the shadowed places no one will think to look.

 

With only a second’s hesitation, fingers drifting over the top of the makeup case, Lance folds the box top shut, picking it up and shoving it under his bed, crawling under after it to make sure it is pushed to the furthest corner against the walls, and then shoves the other boxes being stored under his bed around it for good measure, until it’s hidden from sight.

 

There’s no room for that…person anymore.

 

“Hey, you alright?” Lance feels a foot prod the back of his leg as Hunk’s voice pipes up, and he yelps, shooting up and slamming his head against the underside of his bed, pain blossoming through his skull as his vision blurs.

 

“…Ow.”

 

“Lance?!”

 

“I’m fine, just…” He groans, wiggling back out from under the bed and staring up at Hunk tiredly. “You surprised me.”

 

Hunk grins sheepishly. “Sorry. I’m just…hungry. They said there’s snacks left out in the dorm lounge tonight, right? Since a lot of students skipped dinner to unpack.”

 

“Yeah.” Lance nods, wincing when that sends another spike of pain through his head. “You want to go get some?”

 

“Please.”

 

They barely make it five steps down the hall before the whispers, the sidelong glances start—there’s plenty of other students still out in the hall, curfew rules given some leeway due to the fact it’s move-in day, and out here Lance and Hunk stick out like sore thumbs. In uniforms Lance imagines they’ll look much like everyone else, but everyone’s milling about in casual clothing right now, and Lance and Hunk’s worn, clearly hand-me-down sweaters and jeans with their tears in the knees make a sharp contrast to the neat, new clothes the other kids sport. Glancing down uncomfortably, Lance tries not to stare too hard at his own bare feet in comparison to the clean-looking shoes many of the others he can spot are wearing.

 

He hadn’t even thought to put shoes on. His sneakers were for the mud of the park and the cracked gravel of the street, not for indoors. Lance is pretty sure his mother would kill him if he ever wore his grubby shoes on inside. Even Marcie’s pretty work pumps that she had saved for months for and looks after with religious zeal come off at the door at home.

 

He’s so preoccupied with his little thought derailment of the etiquette of shoes on versus shoes off, Lance doesn’t even notice the boys rounding the corner until he quite literally slams into one, their chin connecting with his forehead, sending him reeling back in surprised pain, Hunk catching him with a startled yelp.

 

“What the fuck?” someone says in a surprised, vaguely annoyed voice, and Lance glances up cautiously as he straightens back up, wincing when he makes eye contact with an older-looking boy with pale skin and short red-blond hair who is currently glaring at him like he’s a particularly disgusting piece of gum under his shoe.

 

“S-Sorry,” he stutters on instinct, taking a step back and slamming into Hunk, who Lance had conveniently forgotten was right behind him.

 

“ _Sorry?_ You damn well should be!” The older boy says with a kind of miffed outrage, crossing his arms as the other boy next to him looms over Lance and Hunk. “Didn’t your parents ever teach you to watch where you’re going?”

 

“He said sorry,” Hunk says, taking a step forward, and Lance gratefully ducks behind Hunk. It’s hardly his proudest moment, but these boys are at least a head taller than him and could probably bench-press him easy—Lance is tiny even for an eleven-year-old, and Hunk, lucky bastard, sits rather tall and large for a twelve-year-old. Between the two of them, Lance likes Hunk’s chances of at least getting the other boys to back down, given they can’t really risk their scholarships by getting into a fistfight on their first day.

 

“What are you, his bodyguard? Back off, lumpy.” Big and scary scowls. “I’m talking to the twig.” He raises an eyebrow at Lance, and snorts. “How the hell did you get into this school? What are you, a Mexican?”

 

Lance flushes, pushing past Hunk with every intention of informing the boy that he is _Cuban_ , thank you very much, and that he can, frankly, fuck right off, when a serenely cheerful voice beats him to the punch.

 

“Demonstrating a deep and layered understanding of the various nuances of the varied Hispanic identities as always, Travis,” a girl says from an open door on the left, leaning against the frame with her arms crossed. “Then again, you’d probably know quite a bit about Mexico, right? Given your daddy gets his cocaine stash from there.”

 

The boy turns red, spluttering. “Fuck off, _Ritchie._ ”

“Oh, right.” The girl hums, lifting a hand to inspect her nails. “I suppose I could fuck off? Could fuck off right to the headmaster’s office. I’ve been meaning to look in on my granddad since I arrived.”

 

The boy pales, and his friend grabs his arm, pulling him away. “C’mon, man. Not worth it.” The two turn, disappearing around the corner, and the girl watches them go with a satisfied smirk.

 

“Bye!” she trills, and then turns back to Hunk and Lance with a raised eyebrow. “You two all good?”

 

“Uh.” Lance glances at Hunk, who shrugs, eyes wide in confusion. “Yeah. Thanks.”

 

“No problemo,” the girl says happily. “Travis and Jordan are mcfucking pricks. I like any excuse to tell them to fuck off.”

 

“…Okay?” Lance says awkwardly, unsure of what else to say. Subconsciously he brings a hand up to play with his hair, like he usually does when he’s nervous, only to meet air and flinch, pulling his hand down as he remembers there’s nothing there anymore.

 

“Ritzie!” an exasperated voice calls from inside the room behind the girl, and a boy with short black hair, dark eyes, and a scowl appears in the doorway. “Stop harassing new students.”

 

The girl gasps, placing a hand over her heart. “Me? Never. I’m only introducing myself.” Sticking a hand out to Lance, she grins. “Isabel Lamae, but everyone calls me Ritzie. At your service.”

 

“…Lance. Lance McClain,” Lance answers, carefully taking her hand and inspecting the girl before him. Ritzie is tall and willowy, probably two or three years older than him, if he had to guess, with thick blonde hair pulled up in two pony-buns on the sides of her head in a style Lance finds reminiscent of Sailor Moon, and wide, thick-rimmed purple glasses. She’s pretty, he guesses, in an eclectic kind of way, and her easy confidence reminds him a bit of Igraine. “That’s Hunk," he says, pointing over his shoulder, and Hunk waves.

 

“Hi.”

 

“Hi,” Ritzie parrots back cheerfully. “The grumpy one who yelled at me is Yuu, my roommate.” Behind her, the boy’s eyes narrow, fixing a glare at the back of her head.

 

“I thought boys and girls couldn’t room together?” Hunk asks curiously, looking between Ritzie and Yuu.

 

“They can’t,” Ritzie says, sticking her hands in her pockets with a self-satisfactory smirk and pursing her lips, blowing a bright pink bubble out that explodes after a moment with a quiet little pop.

 

“Then…”

 

“Her grandfather’s the headmaster,” Yuu sighs, seemingly giving up and approaching them to stand next to Ritzie in the doorway. “Which means she does whatever she wants.”

 

Hunk pales, staring at Ritzie with wide eyes. “Oh my God your grandfather’s the headmaster.”

 

“Chill,” Ritzie says, idly waving a hand. “You two are new, right? Scholarship, I’m guessing? No offense but you can usually guess.” Lance winces, and Ritzie shoots him finger guns. “Don’t worry about it. I’m glad, you two look like you deserve it.” She nods to herself, looking pleased. “I have an eye for these things.”

 

“Well, she thinks she does,” Yuu says, rolling his eyes.

 

“…Great,” Hunk says faintly.

 

“Yep.” Ritzie nods, pausing for a moment, head tilting, and then pulls out a small packet from her pocket and offers it to them. “Bubblegum?”

 

Lance blinks, glancing at Hunk who subtly shakes his head, eyes wide.

 

“…Sure. Why not,” Lance says, already reaching out.

 

And that is how he and Hunk end up accidentally befriending Ritzie Lamae and Yuu Itami, the livewire princess of Greenwood and her sounding board slash handler.

 

 

xxx

 

 

Slowly, they fall into something like a settling at the Academy, or at least a semblance of it. It’s…undeniably odd, being even this far away from Veradera on a daily basis, but Lance finds it’s somewhat the change he needs. He misses home, of course. He misses it like hell, but he still gets to come back on the weekends, to revisit his sisters, his family, the worn staircases of his home, the faded glow-in-the-dark stars on his ceiling, the cracks in the concrete outside his driveway, the crab-grass riddled front yard of Hunk’s small house where his now aging dog sleeps in the afternoon sun, the white, bright sand of Veradera beach, the creaking pews of the church, the feel of Loraine’s gravestone against his back.      

 

And this way, he’s still alleviated from the… _pressures_ of his home. Lance will never say he feels unsafe or unwelcome in his house, because there would never be a bigger lie. His family would protect him with their lives. But…it’s also hard being there sometimes now. The gaping loss of Loraine, while scabbing over, is still achingly fresh in all their chests, and while Lance doesn’t have the heart to place any more undue burdens on his family in their grief, pretending to be okay all the time is, frankly, exhausting.

 

Because, ultimately, Lance is very aware he _isn’t_ okay. He’s better than he was—he’s learned to function again, to survive, but a mediocre duct-taped job holding together solely on hope and a prayer doesn’t fix something firmly broken. Lance is never going to be whole again, not in his soul or his heart, he knows, in a way he can’t put into words. Even once the worst of the grief and the agony has been worked through, one day, this is something he will never move past. The connection between himself and Loraine was intimate and fathomless in a way he shares with no one else. He holds something similar with Hunk, he thinks, but it’s different. Hunk is someone he feels close to, like they hold a connection beyond their time together, but Loraine was like…the other half of his mind. Losing her fractured something deep inside his soul, well beyond the definitions of his short childhood or his yet unlived years.

 

Sometimes, he wonders if this is what the oceans might feel like, if someone came along and placed blocks between them, severing Pacific and Indian and Artic. That’s not the way things are meant to be, he thinks. Water is meant to intermingle and run together. You can’t take one piece of water and say it is different from another, when they are meant to be one.

 

Lance’s only other comfort in his thoughts, to rival that of knowing his family doesn’t have to see these broken pieces of himself, is that Hunk is here with him. Hunk, who picks him up and puts him back together when he falls. Hunk, who listens to his nonsensical ramblings about water and souls and Loraine with an understanding and patience beyond his years, and cleans up Lance’s messes afterwards, coaxing the blades from Lance’s skin before he can do more harm to himself, and forcing him to sleep and eat and keep up appearances in class.

 

Honestly, if it weren’t for Hunk, Lance really isn’t sure if he would have survived those first few months at Greenwood.

 

The other surprisingly consistent presences he finds at his side are Ritzie and Yuu, who seem to take an attachment to Lance and Hunk after that first encounter on move-in day. Or…at least Ritzie does. Lance suspects Yuu usually just goes along with whatever Ritzie fancies, either unable or unwilling to talk her out of her ideas, instead simply hanging around for something like quality control, and to make sure Ritzie doesn’t get herself killed.

 

Ritzie is easy to get along with, Lance finds. She’s beyond privileged, as pretty much almost everyone at the Academy is, but not arrogant or obnoxious about it. She has an ego, but only for the things she achieves herself—not beyond showing off, largely the opposite honestly, but only for her own brilliance, never her family’s money or influence, unless she threatens it to protect an underprivileged or younger student who’s getting shit from the kids who do think their money entitles them to everything.

 

Lance has never been able to hold a friend beyond Hunk, too smart and too little and too different to give him much popularity before, but he…he likes Ritzie. She’s just as smart as him, as many others here are, and fun. She doesn’t care about his age or size, judging him by his kindness to others and his _“interestingness”,_ as she puts it. He doesn’t tell her about…himself, about the Lancie-Loo of Veradera beach, and Loraine, and promises to stars, but those are secrets reserved to Hunk and his heart, for a dead child who can no longer be to survive and do what he plans to. Still, he enjoys her company, embracing her loudness and her quirkiness and her spitfire energy. Hunk is slower to warm up to her, but even he can’t avoid her cheerful charisma.

 

Yuu is trickier, Lance finds. Despite his disgruntled complaints, he shows himself to be very attached to Ritzie, her right-hand man. He’s dismissive towards Lance and Hunk at first. Not in a mean way, but just as if he assumes they’ll soon get tired of Ritzie, or Ritzie will get bored and that will be the end of it, but with time, he seems to unfurl, accepting Lance and Hunk as occasional presences in his and Ritzie’s space. Yuu and Hunk get along well, once they both get over their personal cautions. Yuu is analytical design and portable game devices and formulas for circuitry and wires, and that clicks well with Hunk’s easy joy in technology, in science, in creation.

 

Ritzie is more…charm and exploratory whim. Bold words and the written truth in print and demand for answers to everything and anything. They’re traits Lance and her share, in part, and he figures that’s largely why they mesh so easily.

 

And so, while he and Hunk remain partners in crime, formed by unbreakable trust, Ritzie and Yuu also become on-and-off presences in their days, offering new company and idle chatter.

 

It’s…nice.

 

Adjusting to the academic side of Greenwood is its own bag of worms though, Lance discovers.

 

For once, Lance is no longer the youngest, smallest child in his grade. Instead, he finds his classes filled with a mix of different kids, sharing space with children several years younger than him, as well as those older, including Ritzie and Yuu occasionally, despite them being a year older than Hunk and two older than Lance. Class in general is less regular—they don’t take the same classes all the time, and aside from some basics, the curriculum is a lot less regimented.

 

Greenwood is, as Ritzie calls it, “a true magnet school”, dedicated to producing students who rake in accreditations and awards for the school. As such, Lance finds that pretty much every student is dedicated to one or two clubs or particular talents, be they academic, artistic, or athletic.

 

It only takes a few weeks before one of their science teachers pulls Hunk aside and recruits him to the competitive robotics and engineering clubs, his talent for schematics and building the impossible out of scraps, long honed from years hanging around Igraine and Lance’s uncle at the repair shop, quickly coming to light. As for the rest of Lance’s miniscule social circle, Ritzie is part of the school’s elite debate and mock trial teams, and Yuu the mathematics team, along with the same robotics team Hunk is dragged into.

 

Lance himself doesn’t really find an easy niche. His specialty, much as it can be called that, has always been being moderately decent at everything. It was what had allowed him to jump a grade, given there was no one subject he was significantly less proficient in than the rest. He has odd skills he’s picked up, but they’re all what he’s learned from his family—an intricate knowledge of makeup and hairstyling techniques thanks to Marcie, basic understanding of an engine via Igraine, some easy programming skills and how to hedge a wifi signal he’s locked out of courtesy of Evie, etcetera. Regardless, if he has any particular skills, they’re not any he can identify or that immediately stick out.

 

The thing is, Lance’d be fine with that, normally. So what if he’s not an expert in anything? He’s relatively good at most academics, speaks two languages perfectly, can keep up in P.E. just fine, and knows quite a bit about astronomy. But, the problem lies in the inherent purpose of Greenwood—to pull in as many accolades as possible. To not have a talent that can bring awards to the school is to be useless to it, and not a position he can afford to be in as a scholarship student.

 

Honestly, he stumbles across his saving grace completely on accident. It’s one of the lunch breaks when Hunk and Yuu are off with the robotics team for…something, it kind of goes over his head, and Ritzie is nowhere to be found, possibly off trying to break into somewhere she’s not supposed to be. Lance is left alone and bored, and accidentally finds some other students, a couple of which he gets along with well enough, playing chess in one of the common areas. On a whim, he asks to play, and one of the older students, who is known to be a bit of a cocky bastard, agrees with a smug smirk, probably assuming he can beat Lance easy as he explains the rules of each piece with a breezy air.

 

He isn’t smiling when Lance beats him five minutes later, his eyes wide as he stares at Lance’s equally shocked expression.

 

By the time Lance has thoroughly thrashed the next three others that challenge him, each of them waiting for Lance’s lucky streak to end almost as much as he himself is, one of the upper-grade math teachers finds them, and pulls Lance into her office for a… _talk_ about his sudden new skill.

 

Within the next month and a half, he plays through three chess tournaments and ends up with two grandmasters coaching him that the school hires the minute he somehow wins his first competition.

 

Turns out he’s _really_ fucking good at chess, not that Lance would guess that any more than most people would either.

 

“Of course you are,” is what Mavis says to him when he tells her over the phone, ever as much the confidante to him she became over the end of summer. “You’re good at reading people and have a head for analysis, Loraine always talked about how smart you are. Try some language and statistics courses, that kind of thing. I think you’ll be fine.”

 

So Lance does.

 

The first Christmas home from Greenwood, and the first without Loraine is…odd. Christmas has always been a big deal with their family, and it’s his and Hunk’s first extended break home from the Academy, so while it’s nice to be back its also feels vaguely overwhelming. Lance really isn’t sure how being around his family, people he sees almost every weekend, can be exhausting, but it’s…difficult, to try and come back and get into the holiday cheer. Sleeping in his room in the house for more than a day or two feels odd, and Lance is grateful that by day two Hunk gives up the ghost and migrates over to the McClain house with his pillow for pretty much the rest of winter break.

 

It’s not _bad_. It’s nice being with his family and having a couple weeks to hang around Veradera, but there’s still an absence that sticks in Lance’s throat. He misses Loraine, achingly so, and being back home only emphasizes that.

 

It’s hard, knowing that this situation isn’t going to change, that she’s…never coming back.

 

Mavis avoids coming home completely for Christmas, a point Lance loudly berates her for over the phone, but she waxes poetic about not having the money and then mails him down a less-than-cheap looking dark blue sweater and a chessboard as Christmas presents.

 

“Don’t tell the others, but you’re my favorite,” she says, with put-on melodrama, when he calls her about the presents. “Besides if you have to dress like…that, it might as well be nice stuff.”

 

That’s another aspect that makes Lance’s skin itch uncomfortably about being home. He hasn’t allowed himself to touch the discarded clothing of his old life in the back of his wardrobe any time he comes home for the weekend, and he holds himself to that over the break as well. It’s not worth the risk, really, and part of him is afraid that, if he indulged, he might not have the heart to give it up and go back to living as this new image of himself at Greenwood only a couple weeks later.

 

Practice makes perfect. Surely, with time, he will come to accept this boyish, awkward version of himself he sees in the mirror.

 

So, he remains as he has taught himself to be, despite the worried glances his family still sometimes cast at him, and comforts himself with the familiarities of home. He spends time with his sisters, his mother, aunts, and uncle, he visits Carlos and Rachel two streets over, plays with Josie, no longer a small baby but an excitable toddler eagerly awaiting the promise of a sibling from her parents, walks the beaches with Hunk, chases the cracks in the gravel on the sidewalks on the way to the dairy shop, and sits in the garage under _león’s_ shadow, the hoverbike preserved lovingly by Igraine and waiting, promised to Lance once he’s big enough, because _of course it’s his, Loraine would have wanted him to have it_.

 

Sometimes, in the early mornings, when the sun isn’t quite yet risen and the last of the stars are yet to sleep, Lance will sneak out to the churchyard, will dust the snow off Loraine’s gravestone and sit with his back to it, ignoring the chill of the wind and the nip of the snow against his fingers, because he always forgets gloves, _always_ , and tells her about Greenwood, about his life.

 

Lance wonders, occasionally, if she would be proud of him, of what he’s doing to preserve their dream, _her_ dream.

 

He hopes so. He really, really hopes so.

 

He wants more than anything to be the legacy Loraine deserves, to be worthy of the pride and the love and the confidence she had always held in him.

 

He feels closer to her, oddly enough, there with his back against the stone, or with his head pressed to it as he traces the words on the stone, and occasionally, on the ever slowly re-healing scars on his skin.

 

_Loraine Ophelia Eliza, Loraine Ophelia Eliza, Loraine Ophelia Eliza._

Please forgive me, he asks in his silent mantra. Please protect me. Please let me get this right, for you, for me.

 

It’s not that bad, Lance tells himself, and that’s the important part, right?

 

And when he goes back to Greenwood with Hunk come the new year, and Ritzie and Yuu break into their room almost immediately, the former’s mouth running a mile a minute about all the _boring socialite parties_ she had to attend, with the air of someone who has walked through a war zone, while Yuu patiently half-listens and shows Hunk and Lance his new video games behind Ritzie’s back, it’s not too bad either.

 

He’s surviving, rising on up on the way to the stars, and that’s all that matters.

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> You can fucking pry my Maori Hunk headcanons from my cold, dead hands ok. (Btw before anyone asks, the All Blacks are New Zealand's big rugby team, and a pretty Big Deal, at least on the north island.)
> 
> Ritzie and Yuu were accidents. They weren't originally planned but they kind of just... happened, and then I got attached to them. I'm sorry.
> 
> Feel free to come talk to me about Lance, his boyfriend Keith, Voltron, or whatever over on on tumblr [here](http://pastel-clark.tumblr.com/) . Or, come yell with me on [ Twitter!](https://twitter.com/hpClarkster)


	7. Lifelines

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “But it’s not _fair_ either. They feel guilty, I feel smothered, and everyone just ends up miserable. I’m…” He thinks of the gentle hands of his sisters picking him up and soothing him when he has a panic episode, of Hunk’s bone-weariness, yet determined patience, as he hides the sharp things and wraps up Lance’s arms when he hits the breaking point each time. It’s not as bad as it was when Loraine first… died, but Lance _knows_ he isn’t coping, really. Oh, yes, he’s gotten good enough at hiding it from his family on the short weekend visits, to soothe their worries, but now that just leaves the onus on Hunk to deal with Lance when, inevitably, the cracks begin to show. “I’m tired of being everyone’s burden.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Yoooo.
> 
> So this wasn't originally where I was going to place a chapter break, but in honor of season 2, I figured I'd put out one last chapter before the new season drops. (Ironically this chapter ended up pretty lighthearted so consider it your break before shit goes south again.)
> 
> I have it on good word that there'll be some Lance backstory in season 2 (a friend of a friend works for the Voltron team), so chances are after season 2 this fic will no longer be canon compliant. I love this story, so I fully intend on continuing writing it, but I'll have to wait and see what content is in season 2 before I decide how much of it SLAOS will adhere to. If I don't agree with certain things, I may just go with my original plans for the "voltron canon" part of this story, but if I find the season workable with the versions of these characters I've written, I'll try to keep as canon compliant as possible, minus what's already been established in this fic.
> 
> Anyways, enjoy. I'll see y'all over on the other side of the new season, yeah? <3

 “Hey Mavis? Question.”

 

“Yeah, sure...hold on lemme just get my waffles out of the toaster…okay, shoot.”

 

“Why are you making waffles at midnight? Wait, never mind, that wasn’t the question. What’s the point of flirting?”

 

From the other end of the line, Mavis splutters, and there comes a loud hacking noise, followed by a bout of coughing. Wincing, Lance holds the phone away from his ear and waits for the noise to subside.

 

“ _Why are you asking me that?_ ” Rings out loudly, even without the phone near his face.

Lance frowns, bringing the phone back closer. “The waffles? Well you mentioned them first…”

 

“Not that!” Mavis screeches. “The other question! And don’t question my eating habits I am an _adult_ I’ll eat waffles when I damn well please to. Why are _you_ asking _me_ about flirting at midnight, huh? Wait—you’re eleven why are you even awake?”

 

“It’s a private magnet school, and we have a test on Friday,” Lance deadpans, stretching out on his bed and poking a socked foot gently into Ritzie’s side where she’s asleep at the foot of the bed, face planted on top of her open biology textbook. She snorts in her sleep at the movement, rolling over slightly, and Lance stifles a giggle. “Sleep is for the weak.”

 

And his friends, apparently, he thinks, noting Hunk and Yuu’s sleeping forms on the other side of the room, Hunk on his bed, Yuu leaning against the base of it on the floor, notes scattered around them.

 

Over the phone, Lance hears Mavis grumble, and he grins. “So you never answered my question?”

 

“Oh dear lord.” Mavis sighs. “Ok hold on I’m gonna need some fucking…maple syrup to get through this shit. And maybe vodka.” There’s the sound of clinking on Mavis’s end as she presumably fetches something, and then her voice returns. “So why are you asking me about flirting?”

 

“Dunno,” Lance says. “Just noticed some classmates are apparently into that now.”

 

Lance is aware that he is among the younger students in many of his classes, and that means there would be some things the older children…er, _teenagers,_ would do that he might not get, but this one appeared to be a new habit with the students a year or two above him. He’d consulted his resident teenager first, but Ritzie had launched into a rant about the stupidity of hormonal teens and the patriarchy, which hadn’t been very helpful, and Lance had figured asking Yuu was going to be even more unenlightening, which meant he was fresh out of primary sources to consult.

 

Well, he supposes Hunk is technically nearly a teenager now, too, but that is…too weird to think too hard about. Hunk probably hadn’t noticed anyways. He was at his most perceptive when suspicious or feeling like snooping, but otherwise out of the two of them Lance generally did the people-reading, and left Hunk to handle the machines and general common sense.

 

“I don’t know, Lance,” Mavis says, sounding somewhat disgruntled, but just slightly amused, as well. “ _Apparently_ some people just do that when they get older. When they like someone, I guess.”

 

Lance huffs. “Boring.”

 

Mavis snorts loudly. “I don’t know what to tell you, buddy. People _are_ boring.”

 

“I mean what’s it _for_. There’s got to be a purpose? Something it’s useful for?”

 

“Mmm…” Mavis hums, voice lilting. “Well, if you want to look at it like that…” She trails off, the sound of fingers tapping against a table echoing across the line, and Lance knows he has her hooked. “I _guess,_ not that I have any personal experience or anything,” she coughs awkwardly, “it’s good for reading people? How a person reacts to advances like that gives you a big clue into how their personalities work. And if they’re receptive, you could use that for manipulation, or to get something you want from them. Or if they’re not…it’s a way to annoy them and throw them off their game. Plus, it’s something to do, right? Gives you an excuse to talk when you’re bored and want to get a read on stuff and some attention, without it seeming obvious that you’re trying to be a snoop.”

 

“…And this is all just theoretical musings on your part?” Lance deadpans.

 

“Yes! Definitely.”

 

“Y’know, if you weren’t my cousin I’d be very afraid of you becoming a criminal mastermind,” Lance says solemnly, and fails to stifle his grin when Mavis laughs loudly.

 

“You’re the one that asked me for useful reasons for it!”

 

“Hey, I mean you did give me what I was looking for,” Lance answers, sitting up and pushing his bangs out of his eyes. “I like knowing how I can use something to my advantage. Lot more useful than the _birds and the bees_ talk Marcie tried to give me when I asked her.”

 

“And you say you’re not half as manipulative as me,” Mavis chides, and Lance giggles. Idly, he swings his legs off the edge of the bed and stands, careful to move quietly as not to wake his sleeping companions as he slips into the adjoined bathroom and flicks on the light.

 

“I have no idea what you’re talking about,” Lance says innocently, tucking his phone between his shoulder and his ear so he can reach for his face wash on the bench, extracting it from the neatly arranged stacks of colorful bottles. He’d originally started out the year with one face wash on the bench, but between Marcie sneaking this and that into his bags, and stuff he’d semi-accidentally pilfered from Ritzie’s bathroom, Lance now has a wide assortment of face cleansers, washes, and moisturizers. All things considered, he figures it was a harmless enough habit to indulge in. People are hardly regularly coming through his and Hunk’s bathroom aside from themselves and occasionally Ritzie or Yuu, and if anyone ever asked about it, Lance imagines that, with several older sisters, saying they’d instilled a mentality of proper skin care on him at a young age—which was true anyways—wouldn’t be too hard to believe. Regardless, it is a small and relatively secret habit that helps him feel…more like himself. He can’t have his clothing or his hair or the box of shiny lip gloss and glittery nail polish back, but this is safe.

 

“Mhmm. Sure.” Mavis’s voice is lilting, poorly hiding her amusement, before she pauses. “…Is that it? You usually don’t call this late.”

 

Lance winces. “It was on my mind?” he tries, rubbing the face wash into his skin carefully.

 

“ _Lance,"_  Mavis chides firmly. “What’s really going on? If it was just about _flirting_ you would have texted me instead.”

 

“I don’t know, okay?” Lance snaps slightly. Mavis is silent on the other end, and Lance sighs, closing his eyes. “…Sorry. I just felt…jittery. Couldn’t sleep.”

 

“…Is it about summer break?”

 

Lance blinks, not sure whether to curse or thank Mavis’s ever-present ability to read into what’s going on, even hundreds of miles away. “I guess?”

 

“You worried about going home?” Mavis says, and Lance frowns, contemplating.

 

“I don’t think so?” He hesitates, trying to sort out his jumbled thoughts into words. “I’m excited to see everyone, spend time with them without having to worry about going back to Greenwood a day or two later, and I like summer, but…”

 

“But it’s three months,” Mavis finishes, picking up smoothly. “Three uninterrupted months in Veradera, with no breaks from everyone.”

 

“…And no Loraine,” Lance says quietly, acknowledging the elephant in the room. “They all think I’ve gotten so much better, that I’m handling everything so well—what if I can’t keep it together that long? I don’t want to ruin everyone’s summer with them worrying over me again. It’s not fair to them.”

 

Mavis hums. “It’s not selfish to need help, Lance.”

 

“But it’s not _fair_ either. They feel guilty, I feel smothered, and everyone just ends up miserable. I’m…” He thinks of the gentle hands of his sisters picking him up and soothing him when he has a panic episode, of Hunk’s bone-weariness, yet determined patience, as he hides the sharp things and wraps up Lance’s arms when he hits the breaking point each time. It’s not as bad as it was when Loraine first…died, but Lance _knows_ he isn’t coping, really. Oh, yes, he’s gotten good enough at hiding it from his family on the short weekend visits, to soothe their worries, but now that just leaves the onus on Hunk to deal with Lance when, inevitably, the cracks begin to show. “I’m tired of being everyone’s burden.”

 

Mavis pauses, and while Lance can’t see her, he can imagine her on the other end of the line, perched on some chair with her feet on a table as she twists her hair around a finger and glares contemplatively at some random object. Between what he saw of Mavis before she left home, and of the occasional video chats they’ve had, he’s gotten relatively adept at picking up Mavis’s body language, helped in part by the fact many of her idle habits are much like his own, if only _slightly_ more aggressive at any given moment. He thinks maybe it might have something to do with the fact that he picked up most of his habits from Loraine, who in turn might have adopted some from Mavis—they were two of the closer in age after all, Mavis herself only a year older than Evie, making her five older than Loraine. It’s not hard to picture his sister at eight or nine trying to imitate her cool thirteen-year-old cousin.

 

Though, by that reasoning, Lance supposes it’s fair to draw the conclusion that _all_ his siblings and cousins had picked up some behaviors from one another.

 

“Why don’t you come stay with me for a bit then?”

 

“What?” Lance jolts, snapping out of his idle thought derailment.

 

“You don’t want to do three continuous months in Veradera, right? Take a break. Come up to stay with me for a couple weeks during the summer in July or August or something.”

 

“…Really?” Lance gapes, and across the line Mavis snorts.

 

“Yes, really. It’ll be fun. I’ll take you to the theater I’ll be doing some tech work in this summer, walk you around the tourist parts of the city. Can’t afford to shop there, but we can make fun of tourists or something.”

 

“But I thought…” Lance frowns, unconsciously staring down at his moisturizer bottle like it holds the answers to the universe. “You liked your space? You don’t really come home much. Or…at all, really.”

 

“Because everyone always begs me to stay,” Mavis says. “You don’t. You’re a good kid, Lance. I like coddling you a bit, and I’m not a coddling person.”

 

“I know you aren’t,” Lance says quietly.

 

“Just think about it, yeah? You can bring Hunk if you want, or something.”

 

“No!” Lance yelps, before he can stop himself, slapping a hand over his mouth.

 

“No?” She pauses. “…You two aren’t fighting, are you? I don’t think I’ve ever seen you two have a fight. Or even a _spat_ , for that matter.”

 

“No, of course not,” Lance mumbles. “It’s just…I had an _episode_ the other day, and when Hunk was bullying me into eating and sleeping after, it made me realize that…I’ve kinda forced him to be stuck dealing with my problems? He deserves a break.”

 

Mavis sighs. “You know he probably doesn’t look at it like that, right? That boy loves you to death, Lance, _es_ _evidente_ , plain as day. Whether you two choose to define that as familial or something else is up to you, but my point is, he’s probably more worried about you than he is annoyed with any perceived inconveniences.”

 

“That’s it, though. He’s stuck _worrying_ about me all the time. He’s scared to leave me alone on a bad day in case I hurt myself again. He’d run himself into the ground trying to help because he’s a good person like that, and I’m the kind of _cabrón_ who’d let him.”

 

Mavis clucks her tongue. “Language. And I think you’re overthinking things, you should just talk to him.”

 

“Maybe,” Lance admits, padding out of the bathroom, flicking the light off behind him, and over to his bed, wiggling in and grabbing _azul_ from where he keeps it hidden under the pillow and hugging it to his chest, tucking its soft blue fur under his chin. “I don’t know. Thank you anyways Mavis. I’ll…think about New York.”

 

“Alright,” Mavis says with an air of resignation, obviously sensing an end to the conversation. “Goodnight Lance.”

 

“Goodnight Mavis,” he whispers.

 

 

xxx

 

Two weeks later, Lance finishes the last of his finals, exchanging amused glances across the room with Ritzie as they scrawl down answers on paper, and then goes home to Veradera.

 

Despite all his worries, he finds the comfort of being back outweighs any lingering anxiety he feels. He moves back into his old room—the room that was once his, Loraine’s, and Karen’s, and now only belongs to him, and, more unofficially, Hunk, Karen still living in the other room his sisters share, and Igraine having moved into Lucas’s room and taking Carlos’s old spot there to make more space.

 

“I know it was weird for you, having Karen back in your room when she was gone most of the time, especially right after…Loraine,” Evie tells him quietly the one and only time he asks her about sleeping arrangements, guilt at having driven his older sister out of her room last summer still hugging his chest. “She’s not mad about it, promise. It worked out, anyways. Gave Igraine an excuse to move into Lucas’s room so the two of them can stay up all night gossiping. It’s good, I think Lucas was getting lonely with both Mavis and Carlos out of the house.”

 

Loraine’s bed still stays in its corner, the walls above it littered with pictures of their family, of Lance at varying ages, of constellations. It’s…more or less Lance’s now, he supposes. He’d slept in it so many nights over the previous summer, blindly seeking comfort in the remnants of the smell of Loraine’s shampoo on her pillows, that he’d kept up the habit on his weekends back home during the school year more out of instinct than anything else.

 

And now, it’s summer again, a whole cycle passed, and if he hasn’t managed to rid himself of this coping mechanism before, Lance doubts he’ll suddenly start doing so soon.

 

So Loraine’s bed becomes his, and his bed is relegated to Hunk, on the nights the two of them don’t just share. Hunk’s _actual_ bed back at his own house goes more or less unused, but that isn’t anything new. Hunk has practically lived here for years—his grandmother, too, honestly, spending her days on the porch or in the lounge with Lance’s own grandparents.

 

So, yes, in that fashion things really haven’t changed.

 

He makes Loraine’s… _his_ bed a mess of blankets and pillows, _azul_ tucked up in the middle of it, pins a couple photos of himself, Hunk, Ritzie, and Yuu from school to empty spaces in the wall above the headboard, and tries to forget the jarringly empty space next to him.

 

It’s not _that_ hard to find distractions, at least. Lance had forgotten just how… _alive_ his family is. It doesn’t really hit him how much he’s missed out on until he’s being introduced to Carlos and Rachel’s new baby, Josie’s long-awaited sibling, and he realizes in the couple weeks he chose not to come home to study for finals, he somehow missed the baby’s birth. When it slowly dawns on him just how much change and growth in their lives he has missed in his self-pity, Lance pushes himself into trying to be there for all of them.

 

He decides to take it as a marking point of change. Nicky, his newest cousin, is all the fragile smallness and tiny features Lance remembers Josie being, with the brown hair and slight curls that are predominant in their family, and the dark eyes that everyone but Lance has, his own blue eyes now an anomaly without the matching pair that used to look at him with joy and love.

 

Lance can’t change the past, but he can, at least, hold himself to this. Even if he cannot fix his broken pieces, this new, youngest member of their family will never see the jagged edges that make up Lance’s heart.

 

With luck, perhaps Josie will never remember _that_ Lance either. She’s not even four, after all. Children forget so easily.

 

Either way, it’s a promise Lance holds himself to.

 

He helps his mother and aunts around the house, visits Carlos and Rachel’s house to mooch some breakfast from them on the good mornings, takes Josie to the beach on the sunny days with Hunk, plays scrabble with his grandparents, occasionally letting them win, and tried to be happy… or at least _look_ it.

 

Mavis is his saving grace, the patient voice on the other end of the phone when he talks to her at night, perched on the roof with a blanket around his shoulders as he watches the stars.

 

“Spend more time with your sisters,” Mavis chides him over the phone when he recounts his days. “They miss you.”

 

“It’s…different,” he tells her, spilling out the unsaid words and quiet secrets into the night air where he trust only she will hear him. “Everything’s different now. I don’t know how to be their Lance. What if they don’t—”

 

“Have a little faith in them.” Mavis’s voice is firm, allowing no argument. “Evie helped you get into your school, Igraine keeps that stupid hoverbike in working condition for when you’re old enough for it, Karen moved rooms to give you your space, and Marcie calls me constantly hoping to hear how you’ve been doing through me when you don’t pick up _her_ calls. They _love_ you, Lance. Loraine or no Loraine, that doesn’t change. They’re still your _hermanas._ Give the bonds you have with them another chance.”

 

And so, because Lance knows Mavis is rarely wrong about these things, if ever, he does.

 

He sits with Evie around the computer and asks her about the work she does, coaxing her away from the screen for a trip to the dairy on the beachfront for an ice cream when she overworks herself.

 

He goes to the park on cooler afternoons with Karen, hand in hers when they cross streets because she still thinks of him as little and in need of protection, asks her to teach him new skills he’s seen her do, and delights in the way her face lights up at the opportunity to talk to him about the sport she loves.

 

He helps Marcie brush and braid her hair at night, chatters with her about the gossip she’s heard from the housewives at the salon, and helps her fix the holes in her clothing with careful stitching, accepting her excited offers to teach him how to embroider little flowers along collars and let out and take up hems so a skirt can be worn longer.

 

He takes trips with Hunk to visit Igraine at the mechanic’s, helping her with the pet project motorbikes she keeps hidden in the back, suggesting outrageous paint colors for each restoration cheerfully from his seat while Hunk vehemently argues against them, and on the occasional weekend morning, walks with Igraine to the scattering of trees near their house where she has tied up old milk cartons and bottles from the branches to shoot at with her paintball gun.

 

Igraine’s always done this. She taught Lance to shoot as well at a young age, but it still surprises Lance to find how often she does it now, sometimes disappearing early in the mornings and spending hours sitting against a tree and painstakingly landing a hit on every target in view. Watching her grim face and sullen eyes on those days, when Lance sneaks after her and she doesn’t realize he’s there, he comes to the realization that perhaps he isn’t the only one that has developed some odd coping habits since Loraine’s death.

 

After that, he makes a point to spend more time with Igraine.

 

She catches him following her only once on one of her early morning sneak-and-shoot sessions, but instead of getting angry she just glances at him and pats the empty spot on the ground next to her, already loading up another shot.

 

“I taught Loraine to shoot, too,” she tells him after a long moment of silence, avoiding his eyes as she places her paintball gun in her lap and fiddles with the adjustments. “Like I taught you. A natural, she was. I had to work to learn to hit a target, but Loraine? She could hit a perfect shot easy by the time she was only ten or eleven. Much like you, the same innate talent.”

 

Lance frowns, studying Igraine’s face, and finally she glances down at him, smiling slightly. “I was so excited when she was born, but I remember throwing a fit when I heard her name. Having a sister who’s name ended with _-raine_ as well? It’s not like Marcie or Karen had to share their names.“ She chuckles. “I remember for months I refused to call her by her name, so I came up with any other variant possible. _Lori_ ended up sticking, even after I accepted her as Loraine as well.” Igraine ducks her head. “When I told her that’s how she got that nickname she laughed and _laughed_.” She pauses. “She was never like that with you. When you were born I thought she’d throw a temper tantrum like I did, over you both having names that started with L, but she was delighted. Kept hugging you and saying it meant you matched.”

 

“…Really?” Lance asks quietly, glancing down sheepishly when Igraine looks at him.

 

“Really, really.” She hums softly. “Y’know, I don’t think you ever cried when she held you, not even once. First time I picked you up, you screamed bloody murder, and Marcie got a foot in her face the first time she held you. You’d settle for Mamá, sometimes, but Loraine...you were always quiet for her. The two of you would spend hours, Loraine sitting on the couch with you in her arms, just…staring at each other.” Igraine chuckles quietly. “Course, guess I shouldn’t be surprised Loraine was so good about it all. She was so selfless, loving. Never behaved like a selfish brat like I did.”

 

“You’re not selfish, Igraine,” Lance says softly, leaning in and resting his head on his sister’s shoulder. “And no, I don’t think Loraine ever held a grudge against you trying to rename her as a baby.”

 

Igraine snorts. “Nah, you’re right, probably not.” She tips her head down, resting it on top of Lance’s, and sighs. “I wish…I wish I’d known about the Garrison, had convinced her to go, promised her we’d figure it out. She wanted more than Veradera, her whole life. I knew it, we all did, and she gave that up—because when she deserved most to be just a little bit selfish for once in her life, she still chose to give.”

 

“That’s who Loraine was.”

 

“That’s how _you_ are, too,” Igraine says patiently, humor lilting in her words. “I won’t deny that I’m proud of you for what you’re doing, Lance. I just hope you’re doing it for the right reasons. Don’t sacrifice yourself for something that wasn’t your fault.”

 

“ _Selfless_ would be staying here, in Veradera, with all of you,” Lance says, shaking his head just slightly against Igraine’s shoulder. “What I’m doing is beyond selfish.”

 

“No, it’s not,” Igraine says lightly. “You are just as unselfish as Loraine always was, Lance. Me? I wish I could be like that. Instead, when I think of Loraine, of what she wanted and never got, all I can think is that… “ She sighs, slumping forward. “I’m _so afraid_ to die in Veradera.”

 

Lance blinks, mulling over Igraine’s words. “…Is this about the Marines?” Above him Igraine stiffens, and Lance sighs. “Loraine and I found the brochures you and Lucas had hidden _years_ ago.”

 

Igraine laughs wetly. “Well. You two were always ahead of the game.”

 

“Igraine…” Lance pauses, closing his eyes. “Igraine, if that’s what you want, then do it. Wanting to be happy? That’s not selfish, that’s what you deserve….Lucas too, if he’s still with you on that.”

 

His sister chuckles, turning her face into Lance’s hair, and when Lance feels the warm wetness of tears on his face from above, he reaches out and hugs Igraine’s arm in front of him.

 

“How am I going to tell Mamá…?”

 

“I’ll help you,” Lance says firmly, feeling the resolve settle in his bones. Distantly, another, separate conversation of hesitant decisions, whispered over a phone in the dead of night, comes to mind, and he sucks in a breath. “I’ll help you… _if_ you help me with something, too.”

 

“Help you with what?” Igraine asks readily, even with her voice laced with confusion.

 

“Mavis offered to let me come stay with her for a bit during the summer. If you help me convince Mamá to let me go, I’ll help you convince her too.”

 

Igraine chuckles. “New York, huh?” She nods, hugging Lance tighter as they sit there on the ground. “Alright, mini-stalk. You’ve got yourself a deal.”

 

…In the end, they both get what they want.

 

Lance’s mother is less than happy with Igraine’s little announcement—and neither is Aunt Lupe, when she finds out Lucas is going along with it as well—but, much as they were with Lance, they are accepting of their children’s decision, even if they fret over the dangers of military service. Ultimately though, it’s Marcie who takes it the hardest, immediately bursting into tears when Igraine announces things much in the same manner Lance and Hunk did about Greenwood.

 

The thing about Marcie, Lance thinks, is that she sees her younger siblings heading down a path she cannot, _will not_ follow. Evie stayed home because she feared the world, but inevitably lives in another world of numbers only she knows, Karen left early to chase her dream, and only came back once they needed her…and until not long ago, Lance, Loraine, and Igraine remained in Veradera.

 

Except now Igraine is leaving, Loraine is dead, and Lance is a shadow chasing a lost dream.

 

And Marcie? Marcie, who stepped into the head of the household when their mother first got sick, Marcie, who guards her younger siblings and cousins with her life, cannot bring herself to leave. Marcie, single, living with her family at just past thirty, sees her life, her _duty_ here in Veradera, to hold down house and home in their mother’s place if she ever gets sick again.

 

It’s part of who Marcelia McClain is, and it’s part of why Lance loves and respects his oldest sister so much, but he also knows it’s why her heart aches every time their family stretches further apart.

 

Losing Loraine affected each of them, in their own way, and for Marcie, Lance knows, it made her only want to protect her baby siblings more.

 

Still, when Igraine announces her decision, Marcie cries, soothes their mother in her worry, and tells Igraine she is proud of her—because Marcie, first and foremost, wants her family to be happy.

 

It’s painful to watch his sisters cry, but in a way, it feels like a balm of the jagged edges of Lance’s soul. No matter what, they are still a family.

 

Regardless, getting permission to go to New York is fairly easy, in comparison.

 

“Nurse Lance,” Mavis says with a laugh when he tells her. “Out to solve everyone’s problems but your own.”

 

Lance huffs, feigning insult, and thinks of selfishness, for what you want, what you _need_ , and selflessness, for reparations to mistakes.

 

“It’s what I do best.”

 

 

xxx

 

 

New York is densely packed blocks of walk-ups and office buildings, cracked concrete on rushing swarms of feet, and a scorching blast of summer heat at _least_ fifteen degrees warmer than Maryland is that Lance is distinctly aware of _minute_ he steps off the plane. For all that Lance thought he’d gotten a handle on city traffic living at Greenwood in the middle of D.C., the capital has nothing on the simple busy-ness of New York.

 

It’s terrifying, but a little fascinating as well.

 

When he sees Mavis waiting for him in the airport, short hair tied back in a half-hearted ponytail, sunglasses pushed up onto her forehead to keep the stray locks that don’t stay pulled back with the rest of her hair off her face, and slurping loudly from a mostly-empty bubble tea cup as she stands there in her jeans and dark red flannel she’s owned since he was a toddler, Lance can kind of see how this city has ensnared his cousin. She just somehow kind of…looks right here.

 

“Lance,” dhe says when he walks up to her, seemingly aloof until he pulls his suitcase to a stop, and then she pounces on him, hugging him tightly and resting her nose in his hair. “Good to see you, kiddo.”

 

He laughs, feeling oddly relieved, and hugs her back in return. There’s no secrets to disguise here, not in such a big place where no one knows him, and not from Mavis, who just intuitively _knows_. “It’s good to see you, too.”

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Feel free to come talk to me about Lance, his boyfriend Keith, Voltron, or whatever over on on tumblr [here](http://pastel-clark.tumblr.com/) . Or, come yell with me on [ Twitter!](https://twitter.com/hpClarkster)


	8. Longings

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “You’re an adult,” he murmurs, “…Does it ever get better?”
> 
> Mavis sighs, propping an elbow on the bench and resting her cheek in her hand. “I’ll tell you when I figure that out myself.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> (kicks down door) Greetings, I'm back.
> 
> Apologies for being away from this fic so long. It's been a weird few months for me with a lot of personal stuff going on (If you follow me on social media I'm sure you witnessed the fallout of my breakup with my near year-long partner, for one), and that in addition to the Large amount of discourse in the fandom that sprung up after season 2, particularly surrounding Lance content, made me too nervous to update for a long time. 
> 
> It took a while, but I eventually remembered that I started this fic for me, because it makes _me_ happy, and letting the pressures of how long an update was or worrying over people's demands for when Keith would arrive was only hurting me, and my ability to write the fic.
> 
> So new rule. I'm doing this at my pace, Keith will get here when he gets here. End of story.
> 
>  
> 
> Now, before we begin, a couple things:
> 
> I'm incredibly honored and delighted to present to you all the finished version of Peachlance's fanart for this fic, which if you remember I linked the WIP sketch to a couple chapters back. You can check out their gorgeous art of Lance & Hunk [here on tumblr](I'm%20incredibly%20honored%20and%20delighted%20to%20present%20to%20you%20all%20the%20finished%20version%20of%20Peachlance's%20fanart%20for%20this%20fic,%20which%20if%20you%20remember%20I%20linked%20the%20WIP%20sketch%20to%20a%20couple%20chapters%20back.%20You%20can%20check%20out%20her%20gorgeous%20art%20of%20Lance%20&%20Hunk%20here%20on%20tumblr,%20or%20here%20on%20twitter.), or [here on twitter.](https://twitter.com/fairyuphoria/status/817910878154670083)
> 
>    
> Also! I'm still not an artist in the slightest, but for those of y'all desiring them, here's some rough references for [Mavis](http://pastel-clark.tumblr.com/post/158237966132/hi-i-love-mavis-and-i-finally-did-some-concept) and [Ritzie & Yuu](http://pastel-clark.tumblr.com/post/158143576537/avoidance-of-doing-lineart-for-actual-projects-led) I did a few months ago.
> 
>    
> That's it. Have fun, bye. 

 Mavis’s apartment is a tiny thing on the thirteenth floor of a crumbling old residential building wedged between two larger, shinier new buildings, the few small windows in her apartment providing absolutely _stunning_ views of her fire escape and the wall of the building outside.

 

It’s tiny, jam-packed, and bordering on claustrophobic, with its singular bedroom, living room, kitchenette, and bathroom all crammed together into one small unit. As a whole, it’s considerably smaller than Lance’s home, even if he is used to sharing that space with a hoard of other people, and arguably he’s pretty sure Mavis’s bedroom is actually slightly smaller than his and Hunk’s dorm room at Greenwood—which is saying something, given that’s not exactly a large space either.

 

Lance loves it instantly.

 

The first time he sees the apartment, an exhaustingly long thirty minute subway ride involving three train changes away from the airport, Mavis kicks the door open with otherwise little fanfare, dumping Lance’s suitcase by the door and straightening up.

 

“Welcome to city living! _Mi casa es tu casa.”_

Lance snorts, eyes roaming over the mess of dirty dishes in the sink, the unfolded pile of laundry on the coffee table, the assortment of books and music sheets on the kitchen counter. “ _Tu casa es un desastre._ ”

 

“Hush,” Mavis says, pointing a finger at him. “You try being an adult capable of clean, organized living these days. It’s hard.”

 

“You’re twenty-five,” Lance deadpans, and Mavis sniffs, flipping her hair and crossing her arms, pouting.

 

“Don’t remind me. I already feel old.” She claps her hands, grabbing Lance’s bag again and swinging it over her shoulder easily as if it isn’t heavily packed with everything Lance needs to survive here for three and a half weeks. “C’mon, let’s get you settled. You’re lucky I bought a bed that has one of those second mattress pullout trundle things in case one of my brothers or Evie ever came to stay or something.”

 

“Goodie,” Lance mutters, and Mavis smirks back at him, nudging the bedroom door open just as her phone goes off. Pulling it out of her pocket, she glances at the number and winces. “Work. I need to take this.” Swinging Lance’s bag off her shoulder, she turns and bodily chucks it at the trundle bed, sending it flying onto it with a loud crash that leaves Lance wincing and pitying his cousin’s neighbors. “Go ahead and get settled while I’m on the phone, if you want. There’s some toiletries and spare clothes I picked up just in case, since I wasn’t sure if you packed enough given I do the laundry like…once a month.”

 

“Gross.” Mavis snorts, and nudges him into the room, pulling the door shut behind her as she turns back to the living room, answering her call with a muffled, yet distinctly blunt _“What”_ , obviously none-to-pleased with whomever is calling her on her day off.

 

Sighing, Lance shuffles his way over to the trundle bed, nudging his suitcase over to a corner as best he can and then flopping down, savoring being able to stretch out properly after hours of being crammed on first a plane and then the subway. He may be smaller than an adult, or even, admittedly, small for his age, but that doesn’t mean he appreciates being shoved into tight spaces for extended periods of time any more than the next person.

 

Rubbing at his eyes, he sits up and turns to the small pile of clothes and what looks like a spare toothbrush and face-wash, among other things, resting on the pillow. He moves the toiletries without much thought, idly inspecting the label on the face-wash and happily noting it’s a brand he’s used before, but when he turns to the clothes he hesitates, looking at the shirt resting on top properly for the first time and noting a…small problem.

 

It’s pink.

 

A bright, searing pink, small flowers patterned along the collar and lace for sleeves.

 

Hands shaking, he grabs the fabric and carefully lifts it up, eyes roaming over the distinctly _feminine_ cut and color of the shirt with a kind of displaced horror, offset by the hesitant want he feels just from _looking_.

 

The shirt is exactly the kind of thing he would have picked out, a year and a lifetime ago. On instinct, he holds it to his nose, and it smells…not like what he remembers when he thinks of clothing like this, of Loraine’s shampoo and his mother’s laundry detergent, but it does smell somewhat like Mavis, like the subtle scent of her leather jacket and her apartment, and that is…not right, but not _wrong_ either.

 

 _God_ though, that doesn’t take the edge off the _wanting_ , even noting these minute differences between his memories of the life he craves and his reality. If anything, knowing it’s real, here and presented in this space where he is relatively free of the consequences of such choices, makes the whole thing worse.

 

Almost idly, hands gripping light fabric, he thinks of a story his Aunt Rosa had told him once as a child, an old Greek myth from one of her well-worn books about a king who was punished for his transgressions in the afterlife by being placed on an island surrounded by water and with fruit trees growing on it, but could not eat or drink, no matter how much he hungered or thirsted, for eternity.

 

That is what this is like, he thinks. It’s placing cursed salvation in front of a starving person and watching them crawl desperately towards it.

 

He wants so badly, and yet to have it is akin to taking fruit from the poisoned tree.

 

Jerking slightly, Lance drops the shirt with shaking hands, as if it might scald him. From the kitchen, Mavis’s voice, raising in volume as she argues with whoever is on the other end of the line, drifts through, pulling him back to reality.

 

Mavis…right.

 

Assumedly, this is her doing, then.

 

Hesitantly, he turns to the remaining pile of clothing, eyes falling to a now more than obvious assortment of bright patterns and cheerful designs, a veritable ball of doom. Reaching out, both hands grasping unsurely, he rifles through it, overly-short cut fingernails, a habit he picked up to fight the urge to paint them, catching on floral shorts and thin tights and close-shaped t-shirts splashed with color.

 

As a whole, he counts four shirts, two skirts, one pair of high-waist shorts, and a single pair of light pink tights.

 

…Oh, and a clip-on hair ribbon. Blue.

 

Really, it’s not that much, barely a few days selection of clothes, but at the same time, it’s everything.

 

He wants to cry, he wants to cheer, he wants to burn it and curl up in a ball and try to _forget_.

 

It’s the little things that destroy a person, Lance thinks, when it comes to the wanting.

 

Outside the room, Mavis’s voice rises to a sharp crescendo, followed by the muffled sound of something being chucked sharply against a thankfully soft object, and, judging by the following array of colorful swears directed to the air, Lance can only assume it was Mavis’s phone being thrown, hopefully onto the sofa or something where it won’t be damaged.

 

It’s a funny thought that preoccupies his mind for all of about two seconds, before his gaze falls to the clothing spread out before him, and he swallows nervously, calling out. “M-Mavis…?”

 

Despite his half-hearted effort at the tiny vocalization, the loud cursing from the kitchen trails off, and after a moment, Mavis pushes her way into the room, door slamming open and then swinging shut behind her on its own momentum. Her hair is a mess, sticking out in every direction where she’s clearly run her fingers through it, but she doesn’t look upset, just mildly pissed at best.

 

“Sorry, sorry, my boss is a dick. I was supposed to have tomorrow off to do fun bonding shit with you or something, but he’s now demanding I cover my lazy coworkers ass so…” She trails off, eyes falling to him for the first time and widening, taking in his own shell-shocked expression, before her gaze catches on the scattered clothing, and it closes off, becomes guarded. “Ah.”

 

With a kind of long-awaited resignation, she trudges over to the trundle bed, nudging Lance gently with a foot to get him to move over, and then flopping down next to him, lifting an arm in clear invitation. Lance doesn’t hesitate, despite the distant knowledge that the articles of his distress were undeniably provided by the person next to him, and falls against her side, tucking his head under Mavis’s chin and listening to the thrum of her heartbeat, the erratic sound slowing out to a steady rhythm as she calms down.

 

It’s good. Soothing. Like how he used to lay with Loraine when he was younger, the two of them tucked up together on that cramped bed layered in old quilts and well-worn pillows.

 

For a moment, when he closes his eyes and feels Mavis’s blunt fingernails scratch lightly against his scalp as her fingers card gently through his hair, he can pretend he’s back there again, in his sanctuary.

 

But...he sighs out, opening his eyes and meeting the sight of Mavis’s whitewashed wall. He is not there, and this apartment might just be his next best chance at something like a new sanctuary.

 

“I’m sorry,” Mavis says after a long moment of quiet, voice low and unsure. “I forgot.”

 

“Why would you…?” he rasps out, words falling into uncertainty.

 

Mavis chuckles, a brittle, bitter sound. “Let’s call it a momentary increase in stupidity. I just…” She sighs. “I wasn’t thinking, really. Well…no, I _was_ thinking, just not very intelligently.”

 

“Well, clearly.”

 

She laughs at that, small but genuine, and Lance manages his own wet giggle in return. She grins down at him, and then her face falls, turning away to look at the wall. “I…I listen to you on the other end of that phone every week, Lance, and I don’t even have to _see_ you to know how much it’s _killing_ you underneath, living like that. No matter what, you’re miserable because of it, and I suppose I just thought…” She shrugs. “No one knows you here, so there’s no consequences here, y’know? It’s completely removed from home, from your school…from everything.” Mavis smiles weakly. “It’s stupid, but I guess at the time I wanted this place to be the escape for you that I made it for me. Plus, well…I can’t help but feel a little guilty, I suppose.”

 

Lance shifts at that, offering a questioning noise. “What? Why?”

 

Mavis shifts nervously. “Lance, you _hate_ living like this, and _I_ was the one who talked you into Greenwood in the first place—“

 

“Hey, no. No.” Lance sits up quickly, glaring at Mavis. “You didn’t talk me into _anything_. This— _everything_ was my decision. You didn’t coerce me into making the choices I have or any of that shit.”

 

“But—“

 

“Nope!” he says firmly, poking his cousin’s cheek gently. “You helped me, nothing more, and for that I’m _grateful_ , okay? I’m…” He sighs. “I’m not saying I like living like this, or that I’m alright with it, because I’m really…really not, but I need it. I need this… _purpose_ , to keep me going, to give me something to hold onto.” Lance hesitates. “I’m honestly not sure if I’d be alive right now, if you hadn’t helped me find that. It stabilized me.”

 

Mavis stares at him for a long moment, and then groans, head tipping back to fall against the side of the proper bed next to the trundle, where her back rests. “Don’t go getting emotional on me now, kid. We can’t both be having a sob fest, and your bullshit earnestness makes my self-pity just look sad.”

 

Lance grins in spite of himself. “Karma for deciding you’re to blame for all my problems.”

 

“Hey!” Mavis sticks a hand into the air, pointing up at nothing imperiously. “I never said I was to blame for _all_ your problems. Just…a few of them.” She coughs, hand falling after a moment almost bashfully. “Ok, in retrospect, that sounds…yeah.” After a moment, she glances down at him, raising an eyebrow. “I did actually mean to return those this morning before I picked you up and get you some different stuff, I just genuinely forgot.”

 

He smiles softly. “I believe you. I wasn’t angry in the first place, anyways.”

 

It’s true, really. Whatever slight slivers of annoyance he’d felt at Mavis sticking such metaphorical poisoned fruit in front of him had quickly drained away within minutes, leaving only a kind of calm acceptance and tiny pieces of lingering grief.

 

Mavis loves him, as much as any of his sisters, and maybe even almost as much as Loraine had, he knows this. She would never do anything to intentionally hurt him, or pain him. She only wanted to help—had only _ever_ wanted to help, since that first conversation after Loraine’s funeral, when she had offered him Loraine’s final gift, and along with it the directions to a chance at redemption.

 

“I should have known it was a shitty idea from the beginning, really,” Mavis murmurs quietly, leaning over and snagging the single pair of tights to glare at them ruefully. “Sticking you with that kind of decision.”

 

Almost unconsciously, Lance reaches out, catching the dangling ends of the tights carefully and tangling them between his fingers. “It’s not that I don’t want to, it’s just…” He swallows. “I want _too much_ , I think. I’m afraid if I let myself have that kind of thing, I might not have the heart to give it up again.” His eyes flicker to his cousin. “And I _can’t_ , Mavis. I can’t let those pieces of who I was back into my life. I’d rather die than jeopardize this last thing that I can do for her.”

 

Mavis sighs, dropping the rest of the tights into his hands. “You shouldn’t live your life trying to please what’s not coming back, Lance.”

 

“It’s what I want, though,” he says, “It’s the _only_ thing I want, really, to do what she couldn’t. It’s the closest I can get to keeping a piece of her alive, and I…I need that.”

 

“I know,” Mavis says, closing her eyes. “God, I know.”

 

 

xxx

 

 

That night, Lance dreams of Loraine. Of the soft warmth of her hugs, of the sweet taste of summer air and of breathless laughter caught in near soundlessness on rushing air around a speeding hoverbike on old dirt roads.

 

There are dreams Lance has, nightmares really, that end in screaming, in the oxygen in his lungs being stolen in heaving sobs that leave him shivering and with an aching throat. Those…those are the nights of blood and pain, the sensation of falling through air and of remembering what glassy, unseeing eyes look like, the nights when he cannot escape the day she died.

 

This is not one of those nights. Though, still, the bittersweet feeling of her face and her heart, loving and kind, haunting his sleep leave him with tear tracks on his face when he wakes, regardless.

 

Almost blindly, he rolls half out of bed, intending to walk the five steps necessary to reach Hunk’s across the room and curl up against the larger, slowly snoring warmth that is his friend, before his hand touches scratchy, industrial carpet instead of old wooden floorboards, and he remembers he is not at home, and Hunk is not here.

 

Sitting up, he rubs at his eyes blearily, squinting at Mavis’s distinctly unoccupied bed next to the pullout trundle, and then turns when the faint flickering of light under the doorway catches his eye. Stumbling to his feet, he carefully crosses the room and opens the door, pulling it open with the gentlest of creaks to bring the wash of yellow light from the kitchen streaming in, illuminating Mavis’s frame where she sits on a stool next to her kitchen bench, half hunched over a bowl of cereal and eyes settled on the book she has propped up against the fruit bowl. She blinks, glancing up, and when her gaze finds him her expression softens ever so slightly, almost lost in the imperceptibly neutral planes of her face.

 

He almost expects her to offer some quip, some cliché line that he can read in her eyes that screams _you too, huh?_ But instead, she merely makes a halfhearted noise that falls somewhere between a snort and a sigh, and pulls out the stool next to her, patting it idly. Slowly, Lance edges out of the doorway and over to the stool, catching his toes on the well-worn wood of the ring between the legs of the seat as he looks for footing, scrambling up onto it as best he can. Legs dangling, too short to touch the ground, once he’s settled.

 

Mavis grabs a bowl from a stack on the bench, obviously washed but yet to be put away in a cupboard, in front of him, and then nudges the open box of cereal towards him. He accepts it wordlessly, pouring it into the bowl in rush of noise against the silence as the pieces of grain collide against the porcelain.

 

They’re Cheerios, he notes almost absentmindedly.

 

Loraine had liked Cheerios.

 

Fumbling, he reaches for the milk carton where it sits between the two bowls, and Mavis intercepts him quickly, picking up the carton and unscrewing the lid.

 

“New carton. It’s heavy,” is all she offers, pouring the milk into his bowl. She resettles the carton once the pieces of golden brown are floating in white, presenting him with a spoon from who knows where wordlessly.

 

Lance takes it, scooping up a mouthful, and tries not to cry when the cool rush of milk and sweet tang of the cereal hits his tongue.

 

“I never liked Cheerios much growing up,” Mavis says quietly, staring down at her half-empty bowl and trailing her spoon through the mess before lifting it to her lips. “Loraine and Evie did, though, so that was all my Ma or Aunt Maria ever bought when they went to the store.”

 

Outside, there comes the faintest whisper of witching hour traffic along the streets, and the clinking of their spoons against the porcelain bowls is loud in the otherwise silence of the night.

 

“You’re an adult,” he murmurs, “…Does it ever get better?”

 

Mavis sighs, propping an elbow on the bench and resting her cheek in her hand. “I’ll tell you when I figure that out myself.”

 

Lance nods jerkily, and that’s the end of it.

 

 

xxx

 

 

Even by that first day after Lance arrives, things are a mess, because Mavis’s schedule is a mess—and maybe her life in general is a bit of a mess, too, but Lance imagines that comes with the territory when one is somehow a part-time bartender, part-time stagehand, and freelance musician all at once.

 

Plus, well, it’s Mavis. She kind of specializes in functioning from afar while everything actively goes to shit, which he suspects is a trait he might slowly be inheriting via continued exposure to her mere presence.

 

Maybe. _Maybe_.

 

…Lance isn’t sure if he knows how to function period, really, regardless of outside problems, so maybe he’s just kidding himself with that one.

 

Either way, function Mavis does, so the morning after their little heart-to-heart over soggy bowls of Cheerios in the last trickling vestiges of night, she rolls out of bed to the chime of an annoyingly cheerful alarm at six AM and staggers her way into the bathroom to get ready for work, nearly tripping over Lance’s trundle as she goes, which is enough to wake him and send him scurrying into her bed to seize the warm spot she’s left behind.

 

She makes a face at him when she returns, poking the side of his head where it peeks out between the sheets. He hums sleepily, and she grins, a crooked, fragile thing. “’M sorry about this. I really wasn’t supposed to work today.” He offers a half-awake noise of understanding, and Mavis’s expression fades into a soft smile. “I’ll be back by dinner, I’ll bring takeout or something. You still like Thai food, right?”

 

“Mmmm…” Lance rumbles out, blinking the sleep from his eyes. “…Yeah.”

 

“Good, cool.” She straightens up, sighing out. “TV has a DVR, remote’s on the table. Don’t open the door to anyone, etcetera, etcetera.”

 

“I _know_ , Mavis,” he mumbles. “I’ll be fine.”

 

She hesitates, dropping an uncharacteristic kiss onto his forehead, an action Lance would expect more from Marcie or Evie, and then she’s gone.

 

It only takes a few hours, once he’s rolled out of bed and forced himself into the living room, before the boredom sets in, and the itch, just there under his skin, becomes all the more obvious, like a crawling, wiggling thing, burying deep until it hums and scratches in his bones. It had been there since he’d woken up and gone to get dressed, uncomfortably aware of the selection of clothing Mavis had gotten for him shoved onto a shelf in the closet, just…there, right within grasp.

 

It’s undeniable, like a siren’s call, and television can only distract him for so long.

 

Almost automatically, he reaches for his phone, intending to call Hunk, his go-to backup system, before he pauses, and then drops his hand.

 

Hunk. Right. Part of the whole purpose of this trip was to not so subtly give Hunk a break from Lance’s…everything. He’s not going to go calling his friend after less than a day over some frigging _clothing_. It’ll just leave Hunk worrying about him incessantly.

 

He takes his phone, buries it between the couch cushions, and resurrects Mavis’s laptop from its constantly overheating, cracked screen, duct-taped death to Skype Ritzie.

 

“It’s just all so boring, darling,” she tells him in lighthearted monotone, bushy hair pulled back in a single ponytail on the other side of the screen, pale skin against jean shorts where she sits cross-legged and curled up in on herself. Off screen, someone calls her name, and she yells back loudly in French, before turning back to the camera with a sigh. “I love France, but it’s all just making nice with Papa’s business associates while he jets them around on cruises, and listening to him arguing over the phone with Daddy about custody, _again_.” She rolls her eyes. “It’s like I’m a freaking commodity to be passed around.”

 

“Sorry,” he tells her in a whisper, and Ritzie laughs, the bright, cheerful sound he’s come to recognize and appreciate in her.

 

“Not like it’s your fault. I’m just looking forward to when I escape the parental affection battle and school goes back. I miss you lot, even Yuu, despite his nagging.”

 

“Miss you too,” he says, and even though he can’t tell her about the long-worn scars on his arms or the buzzing itch under his skin that he called to distract himself from, because she does not know, will _never_ know, he still means it.

 

Will always mean it.

 

Even long after Ritzie hangs up the call, Lance sits there, fingernails digging into his arms where they’re crossed, and when it gets to be too much, he jumps up, forces himself into busyness by washing he dishes that lay piled high on Mavis’s counter, all the way down to their cereal bowls from the night before.

 

He eats a handful of dry Cheerios, pretends it’s lunch even as he ignores the sandwich sitting in the fridge, cut in triangles like he insisted on when he was little, before Mavis left home, and studiously does _not_ cry.

 

It’s fine. He’s fine.

 

And when Mavis brings home takeout and bullies him into watching shitty old anime reruns with her, it’s almost good.

 

Almost…it feels like no matter what Lance does, he’s always just grasping at _almost_.

 

 

xxx

 

 

Two days after Lance first arrives in New York, minus the day he actually got off the plane and took his first steps into Mavis’s apartment, he reaches his breaking point.

 

...In a way, he’s surprised he even lasted that long.

 

It’s not so bad, in the morning, when Mavis doesn’t have work and drags him out of bed to walk around the neighborhood, teaches him the differences between the New York and D.C. metro systems, parades him over to the diner two blocks down and presents him cheerfully to the workers, who all know her by first name. It’s movement, noise, people, all the ingredients to the recipe for adequate distraction and entertainment. It’s nice, even with the oppressive heat of the summer sun beating down on the sidewalks, and Lance can see why his cousin treasures the home she has found here so much.

 

It’s in the evening, when Mavis, apologetic and reluctant, has to duck out for a short shift at the bar, that Lance finds the itch return, driving him to more frantic cleaning and fruitless pacing in an effort to _forget_.

 

He knows, really, that there’s only two options to drive away the itch—give in, or…well, he’s been trying to break himself of the latter habit, for the sake of Hunk’s sanity and the slowly healing marks on his arms.

 

On some level, Lance doesn’t know why it’s so bad this time, compared to any other. He’s been doing this for over a year now, has held himself strictly to this decision even when he’s home on the weekends and holidays, far away from Greenwood and its prying eyes, and he’s never come this tenuously close to slipping, to giving in.

 

He thinks, maybe, it’s the utter lack of pressures here. If he gave in at home, if he dressed and acted as he liked and found a way to lock it down every time he returned to Greenwood, his family would, in well-meaning intent, encourage him to take the clothing he loved, the things he once treasured, back with him.

 

They are _too_ understanding, in a way. They’ll never be able to grasp the importance of this, of the lie he and Mavis have so delicately crafted.

 

But…here? Here there’s only Mavis—friend, cousin, coconspirator, secret-keeper. She knows. She understands why.

 

And so, as the hours drain away and the night creeps in, Lance finds himself falling from grace in a moment of desperate self-pity, fueled by exhaustion and resignation, and sneaking into the bathroom with the single hair bow Mavis had purchased grasped between his shaking fingers.

 

When he clips it on unsteadily, stepping back and squinting into the mirror, it’s all wrong, a conspicuous mark against his short hair and faded dark grey shirt. He looks more like a child playing around in his mother’s makeup drawer, metaphorically, at least, then he does like _himself_.

 

At the same time, though, even that one little piece is…everything. The color of it, the weight of it against his skull, it’s _everything_ to him.

 

“It looks nice,” Mavis’s voice rings out from the doorway, and Lance startles, turning sharply to see her reclined there, arms crossed and considering.

 

He hadn’t even heard her come in, he realizes. Too caught up in his elated panic over this tiny act of...something.

 

“It looks terrible,” he bites out, and Mavis shrugs.

 

“I think the color suits you.”

 

Lance glances back to the mirror, looking again, and for a moment he wants to ask if she really thinks so, but he shakes it off. “Doesn’t matter anyways.” He reaches to unclip it, and Mavis slides forward quickly, catching his hands in her own and staring down at them, biting her lip for a moment in an unsure, hesitant gesture.

 

“I’m not going to tell you what you should or should not do, Lance. But—“ She glances up ever so slightly, meeting his eyes even as she still looks down at him, the significant height difference between them never more apparent. “Nobody here can touch you. Nobody has to know.”

 

He blinks, pointedly ignoring the itch behind his eyes, and hesitantly looks back at his reflection, studying the splash of sky blue against his slight curls, the same as Loraine’s, even at this length.

 

He _wants_. He wants so badly, and he’s so tired of not being able to give into it.

 

Hesitantly, nervously, he slips one of his hands free of Mavis’s, dropping it to his side and running the edges of his fingers along the hem of his board shorts, the long fabric chaffing against the inside of his knees as it has for the last two days, heavy and unbearable.

 

“Could I…” Lance says quietly. “Could you bring me those shorts you bought me? Please?”

 

Just three weeks. Three weeks here, in this place where secrets can lay buried, and then he will go home to Veradera, and be who he needs to be once more.

 

_Nobody needs to know._

 

…Right?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Yes. Ritzie has two dads. It's great. 
> 
>  
> 
> Feel free to come talk to me about Lance, his boyfriend Keith, Voltron, or whatever over on on tumblr [here](http://pastel-clark.tumblr.com/) . Or, come yell with me on [ Twitter!](https://twitter.com/hpClarkster)


	9. Liar

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> It takes four days before things to go to shit.
> 
> …Naturally. 
> 
>  
> 
> (In which a case of mistaken identity occurs, Mavis panics, Lance eats waffles, and Hunk calls an empty phone.)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hello! New update here for SLAOS to kick off July before I get busy with my Klance Big Bang fic!  
> Before we begin, a few exciting things:
> 
> My lovely friend Logan has done some beautiful doodles of Mavis and Loraine, which you should absolutely check out [here](http://pastel-clark.tumblr.com/post/161267464642/pastel-clark-asshole-cat-pastel-clark-give) and [here](http://pastel-clark.tumblr.com/post/162070833677/asshole-cat-pastel-clark-i-forgot-to-post-this).
> 
> Also! Since I love having something to listen to while I read/work, there are now matching playlists for Loraine & Mavis for you to so check out if you so please! You can [find the tumblr post for both playlists here](http://pastel-clark.tumblr.com/post/162371274668/citybreed-stargirl-the-playlists-for-mavis) (complete with coverart!), or go to them each directly-- Mavis: [Spotify](https://open.spotify.com/user/pastel-clark/playlist/2zw5dzXzzfd1e7MIo4PGpx). [Youtube](https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLYyikp8pvXECZvRzhsS-Yy9rV_mzXojmR). Loraine: [Spotify](https://open.spotify.com/user/pastel-clark/playlist/2xCZ9LKVdbLRPvtc6K4s1C). [Youtube](https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLYyikp8pvXEDUrJRD90vNysoOnvS7kDXG).
> 
>  
> 
> That's all! Enjoy!

It takes four days before things to go to shit.

 

…Naturally.

 

Why on _Earth_ would Lance have expected anything else, with such a foolish, hopeful, half-thought out idea?

 

It’s four days of awkward, stumbling missteps in trying to relearn himself, filled with scrambling changes of clothes every time he dares to look in the mirror and feels his stomach flop unsurely at seeing bright patterns and knock-off chiffon, pairing skirts with his loose, faded t-shirts in hopes of finding some suitable balance between memory and self-taught reality, and one rather memorable incident on the second day of this little mini-venture when Mavis had opened the bathroom door to find Lance in tears after he had accidentally jabbed himself in the eye with her half-stolen, half-borrowed mascara brush.

 

Even after making the decision to give this a try, it’s not as simple as throwing on a new set of clothes and calling it done. It’s hardly easy unlearn a year of practice keeping himself from these things, and it’s never really just been about clothes, regardless.

 

After all, Lance thinks, if this was just an odd addiction to what most people might call cross-dressing, then that might be easier to be rid of. But this…this is just _himself_. Lance. It’s an itch under his skin on hot, muggy mornings that he cannot escape and a distinct feeling of _wrongness_ every time his shirts rub against his collarbone and long skirts sit too low on his thin, unshapely hips.

 

No matter what he does, even in this…experiment, it still feels like he’s running from himself, and it leaves him with an aching, wishful desire for the easy sense of self he’d known as a child, happy and unquestioning of what he wanted or how he wished to look or feel.

 

He’s not sure if this is all a result of his choices in the last year after losing Loraine, or if this was, perhaps, inevitable. Maybe he would have faced the same struggles had he persevered anyways as he got older.

 

Still, no doubt this would have been easier, with Loraine here.

 

…Then again, having Loraine would have meant no Mavis, and that in of itself is a can of worms and complicated feelings Lance isn’t quite ready to open yet.

 

Regardless, for those few strange, itchy, yet oddly content days, he presses on to figure out what he wants from this, what he wants from _choice_.

 

On the fifth day, he finds himself sprawled out on Mavis’s couch in the heat of the summer afternoon as the humidity clings to his skin, NASA t-shirt from his suitcase and skirt from Mavis’s purchases thrown on and the hair bow pinned haphazardly to his curls, tongue darting out idly to prod at the leftover sticky sweetness on his lips from an ill-advised foray into lip gloss, old stuff found in Mavis’s bathroom drawer that likely hadn’t been touched in years and was well past any advisable expiry date. He’s sitting in a position that would likely get him scolded for indecency at home—shoulders resting on the cushions where he should be sitting and legs flung up in the air, knees hooked over the back of the couch and skirt pooling in his lap as his arm stretches past his head to flick through channels on the television with the remote clasped upside-down between loose fingers. Across from him, Mavis sits with her feet tucked up under the pillow Lance rests his head on, shirt abandoned in favor of just her sports bra and jean cut-off shorts, brow furrowed as she fiddles with a replacement string for her violin, loudly confident in her occasional bluster that she can do it herself rather than take it to the shop.

 

It’s a quiet, pleasant kind of companionable silence intermingled with the background noise of the TV ads and Mavis’s occasional swears as fine, long fingers poke and prod at delicate woodwork.

 

At least, until the sharp rap of knuckles on the front door jolts them both into awareness, attentions turned to it in half-awake confusion.

 

“Mavis?” a man’s voice rings out. “It’s me, are you home?”

 

Mavis blinks, looking to Lance for a moment, and then promptly trips over herself and falls to the floor with a squawk as she tries to scramble off the sofa. “Shit!”

 

“You okay?” the voice asks, concern drifting into the friendly words. “I’m gonna come in, alright?”

 

There’s the scraping of a key being inserted into the lock, and the door handle turns, sending Lance wiggling desperately in a similar failed maneuver to Mavis’s in an attempt to at least sit up properly. In some distant part of his mind, he wonders in what alternate universe Mavis, paranoid, private _Mavis_ , would ever give some random guy who clearly wasn’t a relative a spare key, as Mavis waves her arms pointlessly from her upside-down position on the floor at the door, one knee still caught on the sofa, and screeches. “No, wait! Jeff—“

 

The door slams open all of three inches, before catching on the chain lock, and jolting to a sharp stop. Sighing, Mavis drops her arms, covering her face with one of them tiredly. “Chain lock, Jeff.”

 

“Whoops.” Half a man’s face hovers in view in the crack between the door and the wall, grinning abashedly. “Sorry, forgot.” Below him, another face, younger and with wider eyes, peers into the space as well as the man’s eyes slide over to Lance.

 

Lance’s heart catches in his throat as it finally registers with him what he is wearing, in plain view, to this man who is _not Mavis_ and not _safe_ , and he finds himself frozen, half-tempted to flee, but unable to find his feet.

 

“So…” The man drawls, thick New Jersey accent caught up in cigarette smoke roughness visible in his words. “Who’s the girl?”

 

“The what?” Mavis half mumbles, stumbling to her feet, grabbing her shirt where it lies on the coffee table and pulling it over her head as she staggers to the door and nudges it back enough to unhinge the chain lock, opening the door properly once it’s free.

 

“The kid?” the man says, sticking calloused hands into loose jean pockets and meandering into the room enough for Mavis to shut the door behind him, with his shadow hot on his heels, a boy around Lance’s age with dirty blonde hair that hangs in front of his eyes and a scattering of freckles on his forearms that stand out against his pale skin. “Wait, wait, don’t tell me…” He pauses, thinking. “…Your brother’s daughter? You mentioned you had family coming to visit, and you’re the youngest sibling, right? So…”

 

The guy’s gaze slides between Mavis and Lance, questioning, and with a lurch in his stomach, one part horror, one part elated relief, several things click into place for Lance all at once.

 

Most importantly, that this guy, amazingly, _impossibly_ , thinks he’s a girl. Somehow.

 

A _girl,_ not…well.

 

Apparently a skirt, a hair bow, and a bit of old lip gloss did a _lot_ more than Lance gave it credit for, especially given this was paired with his loose, boyish shirt that he knows for certain is one of Carlos’s old things, and his distinctly short hair.

 

“…What?” Mavis says, and then her eyes widen as she catches on, darting to Lance in a panicked question. “I mean, uh…” He stares back at her with something like frightened desperation as it fully registers their only options here are to roll with it or correct the man’s mistake and face the potential consequences, which is…unappealing. Making a split-decision in seconds, he silently begs her to play along.

 

He’s not ready to face it again. The judgmental looks, the uncomfortable questions. Not in this place that is supposed to be his secret haven. He knows nothing about these people, aside from the fact that they seem to know Mavis, and that alone is not enough to confirm they are _safe_ for Lance.

 

“…Yeah.” Mavis finally finishes, trailing off unsurely and lapsing into momentary silence. “This is…my niece…Lance.” The man blinks, surprise flickering over his face, and Lance looks to his cousin with a strained, pleading expression, prompting a quick, aborted movement on her part that looks like something between a shrug and throwing up her hands, the meaning, as far as Lance can determine, best equated to a sentiment along the lines of _‘I panicked’_.

 

Which…fair enough.

 

“It’s…a nickname.” Lance offers unsurely, edging closer and wincing at how frail and borderline whispery his voice is. “Long story.”

 

“Alright then,” The man’s voice is bemused, but not unkind, and Lance unfurls, shoulders relaxing ever so slightly as he registers that, yes, this guy has accepted the ruse without question. “Lance it is. It’s nice to finally meet Mavis’s niece. She doesn’t talk ‘bout her family half as much as she should.”

 

“Right then.” Mavis coughs into a fist, eyes flickering unsurely to Lance once more, as if she can’t quite believe this is happening either. “Lance, meet Jeff and his son, Tommy. Jeff and I um…work together, and Tommy helps out sometimes around school.” She turns back to the newly christened Jeff, sticking her hands into her back pockets in a nervous gesture that is purely Mavis, and goes to work doing what she does best—deflecting. “You’re supposed to call me before you just come over, jackass.”

 

Jeff grins unashamedly, holding up his hands in an easy gesture of surrender. “I needed to go over some numbers with you for next month’s stock, and I was in the neighborhood.” Mavis raises an eyebrow, distinctly not amused, and Jeff waves the plastic bag in his left hand carefully. “I brought takeout, your favorite Chinese place.”

 

Something gives in Mavis’s expression, and she looks to Lance. “I don’t know if now is the best time, Jeff…”

 

“Come on,” Jeff waves his hand dismissively, and for the first time Lance finds his mannerisms rubbing him the wrong way. People _listen_ to Mavis, that’s just part of the way she works, and to see someone so casually ignore her unsubtle suggestions is…unusual. Different. “You _love_ Chinese. It’ll just be for a bit, promise.”

 

Hesitantly, Lance reaches out, catching Mavis’s fingers at her side, and she glances at him again, clearly sensing his discomfort. “…Leave the food on the kitchen counter. We can talk in my room, give us some quiet.”

 

“Great,” Jeff says jovially, sliding a hand around Mavis’s waist that makes Lance’s skin itch uncomfortably, and leading her away without a backwards glance. “Tommy, keep Ms. Lance company, yeah? Talk about your video game things or something.”

 

“Yeah, sure…” the boy mutters quietly, sounding as if he’d really rather not, and then Mavis is gone into the other room, quickly flashing Lance a reassuring smile as the door shuts behind her that he does his best to mirror.

 

After a couple long seconds, it properly registers that he is alone with Tommy, and he turns back to the other boy, the other boy who _thinks he is a girl_ and who’s father apparently is close enough to Mavis to touch her like that, and prays that he doesn’t fuck this up too badly.

 

His only reassurance is that Tommy looks just as unsure and uncomfortable as he does.

 

“So…” the boy drawls, soft and questioning. “You’re…Mavis’s niece.”

 

“Um. Yeah.” Almost unconsciously, Lance crosses his arms, shifting his weight from one leg to the other. “And your dad and Mavis…they…work together?” His voice lingers on the last words, dubiousness easily soaking through. He may not know an _exceeding_ amount about the adult world just yet, but he doesn’t think randomly showing up to someone’s apartment that they apparently have a key to with lunch is standard coworker behavior in the slightest.

 

At least, no one’s ever shown up to their house with lunch for any of his sisters or mother claiming to know them from work.

 

“A-Ah, yeah!” Tommy brightens considerably, nodding and shoulders relaxing slightly. “She works at Dad’s bar! She helps with my music theory homework for band class when I’m there after school sometimes, she’s really nice.”

 

“Yeah…” Despite himself, Lance feels a smile slip onto his face. “She is.”

 

“’M sorry about my dad, for the record,” Tommy offers. “I know he can be a bit…much. He just…really likes Mavis. He tries to find excuses to talk to her and stuff.”

 

“It’s alright,” Lance offers hesitantly, not completely sure if it is all right at all but trusting the other in his honesty in regards to the situation.

 

Tommy grins unsurely, bright and cheerful, and idly Lance catches a similar, fainter pattern of freckles along his cheeks to match the ones on his arms, scrawling around the length of his face and catching on the edges of his nose. “Yeah—sorry, I don’t think that was a very good introduction before, with me hiding being my dad like that.” He sticks a hand out, thin fingers smudged with dirt and ratty friendship bracelets crowding his wrist. “Tommy Buchanan.”

 

Lance smiles, and takes the proffered hand, his darker skin tone contrasting sharply against Tommy’s. “Lance McClain.”

 

It’s only then that he once again considers the oddness of his name compared to this ruse—so easy Tommy’s presence is, at least, compared to his father, that it previously slipped his mind once more that this is…happening.

 

Lord help him, whatever _this_ is. Perhaps he would have been better off never touching those clothes Mavis had bought, had he known such complications would arise so quickly.

 

“Um—“ He shifts awkwardly, and Tommy shrugs amicably, retracting his hand as Lance lets go.

 

“Don’t worry. I know a girl named Dylan and another named Billie… _and_ a guy who insists people call him Sugar. Lance isn’t the oddest nickname I’ve heard, especially not for a girl.” Tommy smiles, young and unassuming and all the things his father appears to be without the undercurrent of _wrongness_ Lance in his potential paranoia feels. “I think it suits you.”

 

“Oh.” Lance feels heat scrawl across his face and shuffles back, bringing his hands in front of him and twisting his fingers together nervously. It’s…strange. It’s not that he’s never been complimented on his name before, but the idea of someone now appreciating it in a way that is wrapped up with the idea of him being _not-a-boy_ is odd. He’s so used to forcing himself to associate what it means to be _Lance_ with being what he needs to be—not his memories of being _Lancie_ _Loo-Loo_ , the child that never feared these associations of name and meaning at all.

 

And no, someone thinking _Lance_ and associating it with _girl_ isn’t quite right either, but it’s something different, at least, and that is…enough. Maybe. _Maybe._

 

“Thank you,” He says softly, and Tommy brightens.

 

Perhaps, he thinks, this is not so bad after all.

 

“…Do you want to watch TV with me?” he offers. “Mavis and I were watching this old music competition she likes.”

 

Tommy nods enthusiastically, hands shoved into his pockets and previous nervousness all but disposed with, and Lance feels himself breathe a sigh of relief.

 

 

xxx

 

 

Later, much later, long after the Chinese food resting in its plastic bag in a sorry heap on the counter has undoubtedly gone cold, Jeff and Mavis reappear from her room. Jeff collects Tommy as he leaves, the food still untouched where it sits as he loudly laughs and talks his way out, hand on Mavis’s back all the way to the door, and Tommy shyly waves Lance goodbye, chasing after his father down the hall without bothering to close those last couple steps of space between them.

 

They migrate back to the kitchen on an unspoken agreement in awkward silence, Mavis spooning out the now sticky, clinging-together mixes of rice and meat and vegetables into chipped bowls and shoving them into the microwave to reheat while Lance perches on one of the too-tall bar stools, legs kicking idly and meeting only air.

 

After their food is placed in front of them, Mavis sits down next to him, fork twirling in her hands as she pointedly looks down at the bench and not at Lance. “So that was…a thing. That happened.”

 

Lance blinks, and automatically fills his spoon and shoves it into his mouth. “…Yeah.”

 

“Jeff thinks you’re a girl.”

 

“They think I’m a girl.”

 

Mavis’s head thunks dully against the kitchen counter as she drops it, arm outstretched to snag the glass of some dark, auburn liquid Lance can safely assume isn’t meant to be shared with him that she’d poured while reheating their food, and then once again brings her head up enough to down the liquid in one fell swoop. “Is this good or bad?”

 

“I don’t know,” Lance says honestly, bones thrumming with the knowledge of exactly what just has occurred, and it’s the truth. He really doesn’t know—on the one hand, there’s the strange, bubbling elation at the idea of being something _else_ for once. Maybe not what is _right_ , whatever that is, but…something. On the other, though, there is a kind of precarious inevitability to this sort of thing that promises doom. He is not prepared for this sort of situation, for the upkeep and forward planning needed to maintain...this.

 

If his mother or Marcie were here, they would promise him that this is _his_ life, and he doesn’t have to keep secrets or, vise-versa, tell anyone anything he doesn’t want to, especially things that are none of their business. If Karen or Igraine were here, they’d call him an idiot for getting himself into such a mess, and then they’d smack Mavis upside the head for letting it happen.

 

If Loraine were here…

 

He doesn’t know.

 

If Loraine were here, it is very likely _he_ wouldn’t be here altogether, either.

 

Lance trusts Mavis though. He knows this much, whatever that means for this rather odd little situation. “I really…don’t know.”

 

Distantly, he wonders if he should be panicking over this.

 

…Probably should, in all honesty.

 

He isn’t. At least not currently, though he can’t speak as to whether some kind of panic will set in later—he got good at compartmentalizing these things almost subconsciously, after Loraine. Right now he just feels…numb. Lost.

 

This is not overwhelmingly positive in any way, and this is not awfully bad. It’s certainly not easy, definitely, but it is what it is, and now the only question that remains is what to do with it.

 

“Mm,” Mavis hums, staring down at her empty glass and swishing the ice resting in its base gently as if it might offer her the secrets of the universe, or at least of their current predicament. “You’re damn lucky you inherited whatever same genes that Lucas got for a pretty androgynous appearance, honestly. And that your voice hasn’t dropped yet.”

 

Lance pales, and Mavis blinks, eyes widening as she rethinks her words, turning to him with a faintly panicked expression. “Hey, not saying that it _will_ happen! You might get a fairly ranged or high-pitched voice, lots of people do! Look at me, I sound like a forty-year-old man often enough and I’m trying to pass myself off as a singer half the time!”

 

Lance snorts, breaking into unexpected giggles. “No, you don’t. You sound like Mavis.”

 

Mavis pauses, and then relaxes, a small, fond smile slipping onto her face. “…Sorry.”

 

“It’s alright,” Lance says, awkwardly poking his spoon around the remnants of his lunch. “I’m not that worried about that sort of thing with um, with Jeff and Tommy, anyways. Like…” He frowns. “Yeah, it’s surprising, and it makes me a little nervous, not gonna lie, but this isn’t my real life, really. What they think I am or am not, it doesn’t matter that much. I’d just never really considered the fact that those… _changes_ will happen one day.”

 

“Growing up happens to the best of us, Lance.” Mavis grins wryly. “We all just have to live with it, there’s not many alternatives.”

 

There’s a pause, soft but peaceful, as they both poke unsurely at their food, and then Mavis breaks into giggles, growing in volume and hysteria quickly. “God, what are we _doing?_ ”

 

Despite himself, Lance finds the infectious laughter catch him, leaving him burying his mirth in wide, tight-lipped smiles against his palms. “No idea.”

 

Mavis cackles at that, hunching over and sending her bar stool rocking unsteadily, and it only sends Lance into further giggles, grinning over his fingers as he peers down at her doubled-over form, her shoulders shaking from surprised, relief-stricken nerves.

 

It’s all a mess, but at least it’s _their_ mess—to own, to claim, to do with as they please.

 

And that? That is good.

 

Eventually, after the food is finished and the dishes washed and left on the drying rack, they find themselves curled back up on the couch as the evening heat falls to mildly warm and humid night air that clings to their skin like a second pair of pajamas. The two of them sit in the middle with Lance slumped into Mavis’s side, her arm thrown over his shoulders and his fingers tangled in the edge of her large sleep shirt as she flicks through channels, looking for a late-night rerun of a movie or a cartoon.

 

There is a steeping quiet, made up of uncertainty and a million questions they both have about all this, and all the things they cannot understand about each other, even after Mavis finds an old anime being shown and leaves it with the volume on low.

 

Lance lets himself be the first to break their waiting, speaking into the night where the daylight may not have his unsure thoughts. “So… Jeff.”

 

Mavis freezes ever so slightly, eyes trained on the television. “Jeff,” she says. “Jeff is…a friend.”

 

“You said he was a coworker.”

 

“He is!” Mavis blinks, and then shrugs. “Well, I mean, technically it’s more like he’s my _boss_ —“

 

“You’re sleeping with your boss?!” Lance screeches, surprise getting the better of him, and Mavis cringes.

 

“I’m not sleeping with _anyone_. And how do you even know what that means?! You’re like… _barely_ twelve.”

 

“Mavis I grew up in a house with eight teenagers,” Lance deadpans. “I know what sex is, thank you very much!”

 

Mavis turns red, sputtering, and he sighs. “Geez, what is he like, ten years older than you?“

 

“Only eight, and it’s really—it’s _really_ not like that, okay?” she says sharply, cutting him off, frame still tense and awkward, and Lance relents, burying back against her side and resting his head against her chest.

 

It’s a different sound than Loraine’s heartbeat, just ever so slightly in its feeling in a way he cannot explain, but it’s still calming, regardless. Mavis is not Loraine, but that does not inherently make her lesser. It just makes it…well, different.

 

Loving Loraine, attaching himself to her as his anchor in the world, that was easy, natural. Mavis is…this is a _foundation_ , a trust they have chosen to build, rather than one that was innately there from the beginning. They do not automatically know each other the same way Lance and Loraine did, but they have _chosen_ to, and in a way that is maybe even more powerful.

 

Maybe.

 

It is difficult, he thinks, to define his relationship with others without using Loraine as a reference point, and he neither wants to live his life seeing everything as _lesser_ than Loraine in some way, nor as ever coming to see the bond he shared with his sister as somehow less important, because of what it held in inexplicable connections over fostered faith and work.

 

“So what is it like, then?” he asks instead to quiet the rabbit-heartbeat thoughts of his mind, and Mavis hums, unsure and considering.

 

“I dunno kid, alright? It’s just…Jeff is kind to me, and the attention is nice, I guess. He’s apparently been really lonely since his wife, Tommy’s mom, left a few years ago, and I think he just likes having someone to talk to.” She shrugs, shifting Lance’s weight ever so slightly. “He says he needs me around, and it’s…it’s flattering. He owns the bar I work at, and when I started helping him with more managerial duties, my paycheck like…doubled. I was really struggling to make rent at the time so he inadvertently helped me out a lot there.”

 

Lance crinkles his nose. “Still. Giving him a key, though? You used to lock your bedroom door at home just to stop people from getting in. Including your brothers. Whom you _shared the room with_.”

 

Mavis makes an unhappy noise of half-hearted denial at that, twisting her hands together in a way he knows means she’s fibbing. “It just sort of ended up that way. I started doing all this extra work around the place and helping him with the books and suddenly there was just a lot of off-hours talks and him showing up with lunch and stuff and then it was just…easier, for him to have a key. I got used to it, I guess. He means well, and I don’t dislike the company. And it’s free food and stuff and…my job too, y’know.”

 

“It doesn’t sound like it makes you happy, though,” Lance says, because no matter what his dwellings on the knowing of Loraine versus the knowing of anyone else, he understands enough about Mavis to discern this, at least.

 

 

“It doesn’t make me _unhappy_ , and that’s enough when it comes to me dealing with people,” Mavis says firmly. “He’s…it’s complicated.”

 

“I guess.”

 

“I promise you it’s fine,” she says with all the certainty that comes with being someone like Mavis. “I’m not going to start shacking up with psychos or something, don’t worry.”

 

Lance grins against her sleeve, shaking his head ever so slightly. “If you say so.”

 

 

xxx

 

 

That night is when the panic _does_ come, fleeting but certain as it leaves him breathless and stumbling from sleep, dreams of hands yanking back his hair and _cutting_ and of whispered voices from long-left classrooms chasing after him. It’s a wordless hum of anxiety of _what happens if they know, what happens if they find out_ , that leaves him rolling and scrambling his way off the pullout mattress and up into Mavis’s bed, clinging to her shakily as she whines sleepily and shifts over enough to make room for him, patting his head absently as she passes out again.

 

He falls asleep to the soothing sounds of her breathing and the distant honks of the cars in the night traffic outside, and in the morning she makes him frozen waffles that are still soggy after being toasted and promises him that if he wants it so, Jeff and Tommy will never set foot in this apartment again while he is here.

 

And it’s the truth, for a couple days—before Jeff calls to invite himself over for lunch with a fifteen minute warning Mavis cannot seem to deny him, and Lance throws on a frilly shirt and shorts without thinking.

 

That second time, he doesn’t bring Tommy, and Lance sits fidgeting uncomfortably in the corner.

 

The third time, he does, and Tommy teaches Lance poker with the card set he brought stuffed in his shorts pocket with a hopeful, hesitant expression.

 

Despite everything, the Buchanans suddenly seem to become a part of the regular schedule, after that.

 

Perhaps it’s not surprising, in a way. This may be Lance’s escape from his reality, but this is Mavis’s _actual_ life at the end of the day, and apparently Jeff and Tommy, for better or for worse, are part of it.

 

And so he gets used to Jeff showing up every few days to eat or to talk or to drag Mavis out to go somewhere with him, and to dodging inside the bedroom every time he hears a knock at the door and he’s not _appropriately dressed_ , per se, just in case.

 

It becomes a part of the new normal disconcertingly quickly, if he’s being honest.

 

He likes Tommy’s company, at least. It’s odd, hanging around someone the same age as him—he’s used to befriending people who are technically older, no matter how infinitesimal that one year gap between himself and Hunk might feel, and knowing Tommy’s only a few months older is odd.

 

Not bad, but…definitely odd.

 

Still, it’s nice, to have someone to hang out with when Jeff inserts himself into Mavis’s daily schedule with charming smiles and reassuring words, and Tommy holds a kind of quiet peacefulness different from Hunk or Yuu’s that Lance can appreciate. The afternoons he spends playing snap or go fish with him and helping him braid more messy friendship bracelets for his wrists and ankles are…good.

 

It’s undeniably strange when Tommy braids him ones in bright pinks and yellows and tells him that they’re nice colors for a girl like him, but that’s not bad either. It’s a strange half-ruse he adjusts to. Not quite a lie, not quite truth.

 

He thinks of home, sometimes, when he works, and he sets aside three bracelets, lavender and yellow and dark red, for Ritzie and Hunk and Yuu.

 

An obnoxiously neon pink one gets made for Mavis, to match the bright nail polish she puts on her toes every few days with consistency, and she ties it to her ankle and doesn’t take it off.

 

Lance ends up with six, all from Tommy in varying colors, scattered up his arms, and he admires them as he desperately tries to ignore the anxious curling in his gut when Tommy rambles happily about his father.

 

Jeff makes Mavis happy, or so she says, and that’s what’s important.

 

Outside of that, it’s nice. Mavis cooks oversized bowls of spaghetti or makes toasted tomato and cheese sandwiches on the nights she doesn’t give up and order takeout or pizza, and the two of them eat dinner sometimes on the couch with old anime reruns on the television. She takes him sight-seeing around her schedule and to the theater she works as a stagehand at on the slow days, introducing him to her coworkers there, all of whom Lance likes infinitely more than Jeff, if he’s being honest. He dresses in his clothing from home on those occasions, until his second visit when he spots what he had at least previously assumed was a man in tights and heels milling about the stage and a then assumed woman wearing a binder and wifebeater.

 

“It’s off-Broadway theater in New York, Lance,” Mavis tells him airily. “Almost everyone’s either queer, not-cis, or liberal as all fuck.”

 

After that, he hesitantly dresses as he pleases for each particular day on those occasions, and Mavis takes him for ice cream from the corner dairy afterwards like clockwork.

 

He listens in the spare evenings as Mavis practices the instrument of the day, most often the tiny upright piano jammed in the corner of the living room or her violin, and calls out song requests based off whatever show or movie was just on TV.

 

Mavis, blessed by her ability to play by ear, normally nails them.

 

Once his three and a half weeks are up, Lance packs away the clothes he didn’t bring with him in the first place into Mavis’s closet, pockets the random junk she bought him, and leaves with photos for Marcie, a book for Evie, Tommy’s number programmed into his phone with a promise to text, and thirty-six missed calls from Hunk.

 

And then he, reluctantly, unsurely, clinging to Mavis’s sweater in the airport as he hugs her goodbye and wonders how long it might be until he sees her again, goes back home.

 

Home to Veradera.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Feel free to come talk to me about Lance, his boyfriend Keith, Voltron, or whatever over on on tumblr [here](http://pastel-clark.tumblr.com/) . Or, come yell with me on [ Twitter!](https://twitter.com/hpClarkster)


	10. Listen (Learn)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Lance returns home to the backdrop of the setting sun highlighting the sloping roof of the house. Always a little crooked-looking and never quite right, but sturdy and strong against the years it has housed and sheltered them from summer storms and winter snowfalls without fail. 
> 
> (In which Lance deflects, Marcie puts her oldest sibling skills to work, Karen takes a nap, and Hunk has a lot he needs to get off his chest.)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hello I am back. Again. It's been a weird few months, both personally and writing-wise. Boy am I glad to be back to updating this fic though, this chapter was one I was waiting on for a _long_ while. It's always great when I can give Hunk the screentime he deserves, to be honest. 
> 
> I'm shit at replying, but thank you for all the lovely comments on the last couple chapters, especially after the inconsistency of my updating schedule, it means a lot. <3

Lance returns home to the backdrop of the setting sun highlighting the sloping roof of the house. Always a little crooked-looking and never quite right, but sturdy and strong against the years it has housed and sheltered them from summer storms and winter snowfalls without fail.

 

He breathes in, the smell of grass and the sear of the August heat against his skin distinct, and decides that this is all right. While there’s a part of him that desires to flee back to the relatively safe bustle of Mavis’s apartment—where he can live a life of secrets, undiscovered among the bustling city throng, and find comfort in Mavis’s fierce protection—another, almost larger piece of Lance finds a kind of settling in being home.

 

There is a peace to Veradera, to the place he has spent every happy summer since his earliest days, that nowhere else can even touch. Despite every complication and each pain that can too be associated with the place, the joys outweigh the grief. Loss has been seen in this house, time and time again, but it has seen so much love too.

 

If Mavis’s home is the place of safety, this is the place of salvation.

 

…Love should win. Lance _wants_ love to win. Even with his fears, with the secrets and things buried deep he keeps, he doesn’t want it to turn this place sour for him. Maybe, now that he has found refuge for some of his baggage—both figurative and literal—in Mavis’s own home, he can better protect the _good_ that exists here from turning only to bitterness in his heart.

 

Maybe.

 

It’s probably not the best coping solution, he admits, but it’s…well, it’s _a_ solution.

 

Somewhere in the distance, among the trees that stretch out beyond their road’s little huddle of houses, a bird chirps loudly, and Lance closes his eyes, savoring the feeling of _something_ he’ll never fully understand, but can recognize instantaneously anyways.

 

This…this is good. Those three weeks away were the refresher he needed to re-piece himself into a semi-functional being.

 

Mavis had been right.

 

Distantly, he imagines her rolling her eyes, reminding him that she’s _always_ right, and he smothers a grin behind his palm.

 

Nodding to himself, he opens his eyes, and goes to help Karen, the one who’d apparently called dibs on picking him up after a fervent rock-paper-scissors match with Marcie, with getting his bag from the car. She pulls it out of the boot without pause, and waves him off when he tries to take it, swinging the weight around like it is nothing to her. To someone like Karen, realistically, it probably is.

 

“Glad to be back, right?” she asks him, grinning down easily as her bushy bangs fall into her eyes, and Lance smiles.

 

Really, if anyone else in the family knows what it’s like to come back home after feeling like you’ve lived another life away from here, it’d be Karen. She’d taken what she was good at and used it to run as far as she could with it, and the older he gets, the less he can begrudge her that.

 

They may not be overly close, compared to their other siblings, but sometimes he thinks he might understand her more these days, just a little. Not entirely, not quite yet, but close.

 

It hardly matters, either way, really. They are what they are, all of them—the leavers, past and present and eventual, Karen and Mavis and himself, all for their own individual reasons.

 

Igraine and Lucas, too, he supposes, reminding himself that they’ve long left for training by now.

 

Still, he gives Karen a nod.

 

“…Yeah, I think so.”

 

She leads him inside with little fanfare—well, as little as is possible, for Karen—slamming the door open and shouting a booming “We’re home!” before promptly collapsing facedown on the sofa and not moving, even when Lance pokes her side gently. After a long moment, a quiet snore rings out, and Lance giggles. It _had_ been an eight AM flight arrival time, and Karen has hardly ever been a morning person, despite being an athlete, so he decides she’s earned this one.

 

He’s just cataloguing who would be at work and who would be home at this time of the day, when Marcie’s voice calls him from the kitchen, upbeat and chipper despite the hour. “In here, Lance!”

 

As he enters the kitchen, he finds her in a state of frenzy; the counter littered in flour and opened tins of ingredients, with cookies resting in the oven as she whips together frosting with enthusiasm. When she sees him, Marcie’s eyes light up, and she promptly places down the bowl to sweep him up in her arms, littering his face with kisses and fussing with his hair as she draws back, smoothing out the curls and idle tufts that stick out wherever they please.

 

“How are you?” she asks, and his smile only feels a little forced. This is not like when everything fell apart, and every question was a statement of pity. This is different, he knows.

 

“Better now that I know you’re baking,” he answers, and she swats his arm, before handing him the mixing spoon regardless. He wedges it in his mouth despite the affronted wrinkle of Marcie’s nose at the ungainliness of it all, and savors the sweet taste of the batter dissolving on his tongue as Marcie picks up her icing bowl and whisk once again.

 

“Where’s everyone else?” Lance asks around the spoon, and Marcie snorts, freeing a hand to lean forward and yank it gently out of his mouth.

 

“Aunt Lupe and Mamá are out at work, Aunt Rosa’s asleep upstairs after a night shift, Uncle Jesús is in the garage, our grandparents are over at the Garretts’ for tea and the weekly aggressive Rummikub game with the Muñozes down the street, and Evie’s upstairs yelling at her computer in what I can confirm is neither English nor Spanish—though no idea what it is beyond that—again.”

 

“…And Karen’s asleep on the sofa,” Lance finishes for her.

 

“Of course she is.” Marcie rolls her eyes, looking up to the ceiling as if praying to it to give her strength. After a few idle turns of her wrist on the whisk in the mixing bowl, she pauses and blinks, looking back down to Lance. “Oh, right, and Hunk is in the garage helping Uncle Jesús with stuff, since _someone_ conveniently got both his assistants to jump ship.” The quirk of her mouth assures Lance that his sister isn’t actually mad about him encouraging Igraine and Lucas to pursue their ambitions, but he still winces slightly, both at the intentional reminder of his role in their departure and the unconscious one that he has been ignoring Hunk while he has been away.

 

“You should go check in on him,” Marcie continues, unawares. “He’s been mopey since you left, and it’s only gotten worse. I think he missed you.”

 

The guilt rises up, and Lance swallows it back down. No, he _knew_ this would happen, and had resolved to himself it was necessary. He can’t call himself Hunk’s best friend and continue to let himself destroy Hunk’s life with all his messes. Some time away was— _is_ the first step in freeing Hunk from the burden of…well, of dealing with Lance.

 

“Yeah, maybe in a bit…”

 

Marcie quirks an eyebrow suspiciously at him, but otherwise doesn’t question his lack of enthusiasm, and Lance can only be grateful for it as he pointedly launches into a colorful recount of his time in New York, minus a few things here and there, to steer the conversation in another direction.

 

Sometime between Lance’s description of the streets of Mavis’s neighborhood, and the reassurance that _no, Marcie, living alone has not in any way improved Mavis’s cooking ability_ , _trust me,_ Hunk shows up in the kitchen.

 

Lance doesn’t even notice, at first, too caught up in his enthusiastic tale about the day Mavis managed to get them lost on the subway, twice, and then locked out of the apartment…twice, much to his sister’s evident horror. It’s not until he hears the shuffle of noise at the doorway, and Marcie looks up from her mixing bowl to chirp a friendly “Oh! Hunk! There you are,” that it registers, and Lance freezes mid-sentence, rant stalled to silence in an instant.

 

Turning his head suddenly feels harder than admitting to every doubt, every fear, Lance has felt bubbling under his skin both during and after his visit to see Mavis, and when he finally does, meeting Hunk’s gaze isn’t any easier. Hunk has always been of the earth—the kind of peace and comfort equivalent to skipping stones dancing along a lake or the feel of hot sand lining the surf—but in this moment, with narrowed eyes trained on Lance with a kind of fury he has never known directed at him as such, he is _steel_.

 

“Look, Lance is back!” Marcie continues on, painfully oblivious, and Lance wonders if it’s too late to just make a break for it and crawl out the window. “I was going to kick him out to the garage to see you, but I ended up accidentally hogging him so that he could tell me about New York.” She blinks, looking contrite, as if Lance hadn’t been the one to deflect with his stories of the visit. “Sorry.”

 

“It’s alright, Marcie,” Hunk says evenly, glare never leaving Lance, “We all know it’s pretty much impossible to get Lance to do something he doesn’t want to.”

 

Marcie laughs, soft and affectionate and a hundred other things Lance probably doesn’t deserve right now, and he shrinks beneath Hunk’s eyes even as Marcie cheerfully bustles on with her baking.

 

There is silence, cloying and borderline painful, outside of Marcie’s idle humming as she checks the oven, inspecting the cookie trays. After a long moment, she straightens up, hands on her hips, and looks back and forth between them, smile still firmly fixed in place. “Well! I’m sure you two would rather catch up without me in the way, so why don’t you go for a walk to the beach, or something?”

 

“Uh…I don’t think that’s—“ Lance begins, startling, but Marcie is already there, bustling him up with shooing hands off the counter and out the kitchen, Hunk along with him. She herds them out through the living room to the front door, Lance casting desperate looks to Karen’s sleeping form all the while in the hopes she might awaken and intervene, and then out onto the porch. Hunk doesn’t even look at Lance beyond one quick, scathing side-eye, walking past him with a grace that begets a sense of false diplomacy, and down the steps pointedly.

 

Lance turns back to Marcie despairingly, eyes pleading, and when she shoots him a blankly unamused look that clearly conveys her disappointment, he decides she’s _far_ too good at reading a situation without actually letting on to it. Mavis may be the self-proclaimed actress of the family—among many things—but Marcie knows how to wield a customer-service smile with downright deadly intent.

 

Suddenly, Karen’s recurring declaration when they were all younger that Marcie could _out-fake-bitch_ anyone makes a lot more sense.

 

“Don’t do this to me,” he whispers, and Marcie smiles grimly.

 

“Sorry little brother, this is for your own good.” She gestures for him to hold out his hand, and he does so reluctantly, Marcie dropping a pile of coin into his open palm, before shutting the door firmly in his face. The sound of the lock sliding into place is a clear reinforcement of the earlier message, and with a sigh Lance drops his head to stare forlornly at his hand, mentally counting out the change. The exact total provided is not lost on him, and when he reaches it, he winces.

 

…Well played, Marcie.

 

“So…” he drawls uncertainly, and when he turns, Hunk is staring tiredly at him over his shoulder. “…Wanna go…get ice cream?”

 

 

xxx

 

 

The walk to the beach seems to take longer than usual, steeped in an awkward silence that leaves Lance glancing at the road, the landscape, everything around them but Hunk, choosing instead to drink in the change from lightly scattered trees to the open coastline, and gravel to sand under his sneakers. It’s not as if the whole idea of nature or open spaces has suddenly become a novelty after only a few weeks in New York—if anything, he’d developed a new appreciation for it months ago, after being forced to adjust to the urban setting of Greenwood—but right now _anything_ is better than acknowledging Hunk’s stiff frame barely five steps distance from him, and so he pretends his fascination with the scenery is significantly greater than it actually is.

 

Somewhere between Lance’s fourth time quickly sliding his eyes past Hunk to the tree or rock next to him, and his fifth time looking up to the sky and gasping when a bird flies overhead—not exactly an unusual occurrence, but he feels like he needs to do _something_ to fill up the silence, or he might just fade away—Hunk grits out a quiet “Will you _stop that_ , please,” and Lance winces, snapping his mouth shut with a near-audible click.

 

There’s a moment of hesitation in Hunk’s steps as he falters, half-turning to Lance with regretful eyes, a clear apology on the tip of his tongue, before he meets Lance’s own guilty, unsure expression, and just sighs, eyes mournful as he turns back away from Lance once more and continues down the path.

 

Things don’t much improve by the time they reach the ice cream shop tucked in the middle of the cluster of small stores across from the water, between the tiny Italian restaurant that does garlic knots Igraine swears she’d kill a man for, and the pokey old trinket shop that services the rare tourist or the local who’s forgotten someone’s birthday present until the _very_ last minute. The ice cream shop is a little family-owned business that’s been there since before Lance’s parents arrived, well over thirty years ago, and between the summer jobs both Karen and Carlos got out of the place for three years straight, and the frankly _immoral_ number of free samples Lance’s sisters had wiled out of the unsuspecting teenage boys working the front counters that were far too susceptible to a pretty smile for years on end, the place has firmly become established as a part of Lance’s childhood.

 

He’s never had a bad memory there, and usually just going in and being welcomed in by the workers that always know him by name is enough alone to put him in a good mood, but when he shuffles in with Hunk, the ring of the bell on the door feels like the toll of death. Lance smiles uncomfortably when the server on duty, a girl who’s brother had gone to school with Evie, greets them, asking him about his trip—because in a town like Veradera, everyone’s up in everyone else’s business. He answers as briefly as he can, trying to ignore Hunk’s stare lingering on him, and counts out the change with a frazzled mind when it comes time to pay.

 

When they leave, stilted goodbyes called over their shoulders and an ice cream cone each apiece, rainbow sherbet for Hunk and mint chip for Lance, Hunk trudges past Lance with weary silence to the edge of the shop-street pathway. Lance follows him until they hit sand, Hunk walking about ten steps in before simply plopping down upon it, crossing his legs and tucking his elbows over his knees.

 

The last fading of the sun against the watery horizon is still present, and Lance finds his eyes caught on it as he goes to join Hunk, sitting down next to him and curling up into his own ball not even yet two-third’s Hunk’s size, still tiny and frail by comparison even with every lie of strength and growth, both physical and mental, he tells himself.

 

He bites into his ice cream, tasting the sharp kiss of the mint on his tongue, and wishes his heart didn’t hurt as much as it does.

 

“I’m sorry I snapped at you,” Hunk says eventually, and Lance wants to laugh, because _of course_ Hunk would put his worry at upsetting Lance over a perfectly normal reaction to his… _Lance-ness_ above his own frustration at Lance’s shitty behavior towards him. Sometimes, it amazes Lance to no ends they’ve manage to be friends as long as they have, given how different they are—the selfish shadow and the ever-giving rock of stability.

 

“…This is the part where you apologize and explain why you ignored me for the better part of a month, Lance,” Hunk continues when Lance doesn’t respond, sounding more tired than angry at this point, and Lance looks to the ground, averting his eyes as he takes another bite of his ice cream cone. “Well?”

 

Lance lets his silence speak for him, and Hunk growls out into the open air, an exhausted, desperate sound.

 

“Thirty-six calls, Lance! I had to talk to your mother just to check you were still _alive,_ and _God_ , do you know what that feels like? I thought something had happened to you,” the _too_ goes unspoken, tasting of hospital beds and funeral sunshine, but its silence echoes between them. “ _Thirty-six,_ and you didn’t answer a single one. ”

 

“I know,” Lance says, voice measured in a way the unsteady beat of his heart doesn’t match as his confession spills from him, unbidden. “I counted them.”

 

“Tell me it was an accident, a mistake!” Hunk snaps, “Tell me your phone broke or you forgot your charger, which I know you didn’t because everyone else was getting texts from you. Tell me _anything_. Spin me some story about why you managed to Skype Ritzie every week and not pick up my calls. _Lie_ to me,” Hunk’s voice cracks, filled with an unspoken, worn-out grief Lance knows so well he can feel it in his bones, and it _aches_. “I don’t care! Just give me some bad excuse so that I can pretend I believe it and we can move on, like we always do.”

 

“…No,” Lance whispers, and he doesn’t quite know why, but when confronted with it, with the knowledge that Hunk knows and recognizes every false confidence from Lance’s tongue, the taste of his free out from the situation is sour.

 

Hunk doesn’t deserve a lot of the crap Lance puts him through on a near-constant basis—doesn’t deserve any of it, really—but he _especially_ doesn’t deserve to be given false complacencies right now, when confronted with Lance’s half-hearted attempt to end it. End their codependence, the depth of their friendship, their…whatever. Whatever this is.

 

“Why not?!” Hunk screams, jumping to his feet, half-finished ice cream cone forgotten as it falls from his hand, and it is enough to startle Lance to his feet as well, with the realization that he’s never heard Hunk like this before. Not once, not when Lance’s mother got sick and things went to shit, not even when they lost Loraine and everything fell apart all over again. “You lie to everyone else! You lie to your sisters, when they ask if you’re okay. You lie to Ritzie, when she asks you why we came to Greenwood, despite the fact that she looks at you like you hung the sun, and tells you everything, and you _let her_. You lie to everyone, all the time! Except Mavis, apparently, for some reason—because she showed up out of the blue after _three years_ of radio silence and gave you some stuffed toy, and that was enough to earn your trust apparently!”

 

“Don’t—“ Lance snaps, because Mavis is more than that, more to _him_ in the face of all they have lost than Hunk could ever understand, despite her faults and despite her flaws, but Hunk barrels on.

 

“She’s the only one you’re honest with. So c’mon, lie to me! It’s what you do best, right?”

 

“I didn’t forget to call you,” Lance says calmly, even as his hands shake, because Hunk deserves to know. Deserves this much honesty, at least. “Hunk I didn’t—“

 

“Stop it!” Hunk says, “Just—stop! Tell me you forgot. Just give me that. Tell me what you tell everyone else, when you want them not to see inside. Tell—tell me you’re better all of a sudden, and you’re not m- _miserable_ inside pretending you’re something you’re not every day, and I’ll lie in exchange and say I believe you!”

 

Lance’s eyes widen, any words he had left falling from grace, and suddenly this feels like a long time coming, more so than a month of missed calls and heavy silence, stretching across a year and then some of broken things swept under the rug but never actually disposed of. Hunk heaves heavy breaths across from him, hands curled into fists, and Lance’s heart catches in his throat when tears pool in his best friend’s eyes.

 

“Because—“ Hunk laughs, swiping ineffectively at his eyes. “Because I can’t do this anymore, alright Lance? I can’t take being the person that isn’t good enough for honesty, but isn’t given the comfort of lies either. I can’t take you being a constant presence in my life and then shoving me away the minute you think you’ve found some other coping solution. Y-you need to pick, because I don’t know what’s going on with you anymore, and it’s _too much_ to be both.”

 

“Hunk…”

 

“Look,” Hunk sighs, crossing his arms, shoulders shaking. “I don’t know if you ignored me because you just wanted space from my hovering, or if you’ve just decided you’re sick of me, but I need some clear answer, because I can’t keep—“

 

“It’s not that!” Lance says, “You’re my best friend. You’re _family_ , all right? I need you!”

 

“Then act like it instead of shutting me out like this!” Hunk screeches, and Lance jumps, taking a step back. Tears threatening to spill over once more, Hunk collapses back into the ground, large shoulders tucked in as he buries his face in his hands. “Make up your mind and just…tell me what you want, you idiot. I need you to tell me, I can’t read your mind. I’m not—“ He swallows, and a mountain of grief shudders out between wide fingers. “I’m not her. I’m not Loraine.” Hunk whispers it like a confession, an apology for a sin he never meant to commit, and it feels like the snap of the rope taut against open air the day Lance—the day _they_ fell…all of them.

 

Lance sags, stumbling to the ground, and feels the grit of the sand against his knees as he watches his best friend break.

 

Loraine may have been the one that hit the ground first that day, but they all fell with her, one way or another. Igraine’s regret, Mavis’s guilt, Lance’s collapse, Hunk’s…

 

Hunk: his best friend, his protector, his brother of summer sun and whispering winters.

 

They’re all broken, _were_ broken, are still breaking, and Lance is only just starting to see it.

 

“I’m sorry,” he mumbles out, and across from him Hunk twitches, “I was just…I was just trying to protect you.”

 

Hunk laughs hoarsely, confused and desolate. “Protect me from what?”

 

“Me,” Lance admits, and it stings. “The things I do to myself. You’re right, I lie and I make myself miserable and I let people love me without actually letting them in, and I—I’m a self-destructive ass and a psychiatrist would probably have a field day with me, and I just thought…” He pauses, and glances over to Hunk hesitantly. “Hunk, I can’t hide from you. You’re there every day and you have to deal with all of that, and you never even complain about it. I had to get you out before I destroyed you too. Mavis is—it’s different,” he finishes lamely, and he doesn’t know how to explain it, that feeling low in his gut when he thinks of Mavis’s hollow apartment and that trundle bed and the clothes she bought for him, that he is not her destruction but, in some fucked up way, her self-decided redemption.

 

After a long moment, Hunk sighs, shuffling over until he is directly across from Lance, reaching out and catching Lance’s smaller hands within his larger ones, turning them over and inspecting them gently as if they’ll explain all the never-ending inconsistencies of Lance’s being to him. “…You’re an idiot.”

 

“I’m not gonna argue that one, you know.”

 

Hunk snorts, releasing Lance’s hands and leaning forward to push one palm against his cheek gently, the tiniest pressure against his jaw and cheekbone. “You remember this?”

 

Lance furrows his brow, trying to mentally calculate what Hunk means before it clicks, and he blinks. “…The time you slapped me? Kind of hard not to.”

 

“You were trying to _spare me_ that time, too. It’s exactly the same thing. What, are we just going to go round in circles now?”

 

He frowns, watching Hunk carefully. “This is different.”

 

“No, it’s not,” Hunk says firmly, retracting his hand and dropping it into his lap. He stares at Lance sadly, those dark eyes the same as they were that first time he met them, perched in that tree on a hot summer afternoon a lifetime ago, and yet so different, and Lance wonders what the hell happened to the both of them. “You need to save everyone, to protect them, because you love them. You let them in, because you need them, but you also push them away when they get too close. You push _me_ away, because you’re convinced if you let me I’ll run my entire existence around you.” He smiles halfheartedly. “Pretty big ego you’ve got there, buddy.”

 

Lance shivers, a sudden lump in his throat. “You know me,” he croaks, “I’m convinced everything’s about me.

 

Hunk’s mouth quirks upward, a lopsided smile, and inside Lance, something settles. “Believe it or not, I need you Lance, just as much as you need me. So yeah, I’ll fuss over you and mother-hen you, if that’s what it takes, because I don’t want to lose you, but do _not_ think that means I’m going to become you. I’m only doing what you’d do for me, for anyone you care about.”

 

“You just have to go and make me look stupid, don’t you?” Lance says, but he can’t feel anything but relief, and, as his eyes track spoiled ice cream cones lying amongst soft sand, a sort of displaced grief. Even now, things still get spoiled, ruined, because of him, and he doesn’t know how to explain that to Hunk without getting the same lecture all over again.

 

It’s not a rational thought, he knows. It’s the kind that brings him to secrets buried in a crumbling New York apartment, under a dorm room bed, whispered to a snow-covered gravestone, and yet he can’t deny its presence.

 

Perhaps _that_ is what drives him to Mavis, because in triple-locked doors and three AM cereal bowls illuminated by city lights, he senses she has those thoughts too.

 

“Wouldn’t be doing my job if I wasn’t,” Hunk says with a kind of tired amusement, pulling Lance from his musings, and Lance snorts, punching him gently in the shoulder.

 

“Jerk.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Feel free to come talk to me about Lance, his boyfriend Keith, Voltron, or whatever over on on tumblr [here](http://pastel-clark.tumblr.com/) . Or, come yell with me on [Twitter!](https://twitter.com/hpClarkster)


	11. Limitations

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _Can’t save the dead,_ his heart whispers, and he hears Hunk on the beach again, for the millionth time over.
> 
> _You need to save everyone, to protect them, because you love them. You let them in, because you need them, but you also push them away when they get too close._  
>     
> Can’t even save the living.
> 
> (In which Hunk and Ritzie deal with things that cannot be changed, and others still that change anyways, whether we want them to or not, and Lance reflects on his own lack of control over so many aspects of his life that he'd see made different, if he had the power.)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Last update of 2017, rolling out. Late November and early December were sucked up with an original writing project for college -my first novella, which killed me - but I'm pleased to be back now to my Regularly Scheduled Bullshit. This chapter and the one following it were originally intended as one update, but for logistical and timing issues I opted to divide the two. 
> 
> This chapter has discussions of divorce, (mentions of) the foster system, and what can be interpreted as child abandonment & poor parenting, depending on a person's feelings on the subject matter. While these aren't exactly new topics for SLAOS (see: Hunk's living situation), I still felt it was suitable to give a fair warning if those are topics any of you are sensitive to.
> 
> Also! Because I'm a hoe for my own bad music choices, there's another SLAOS playlist up called Lions - [The tumblr post (complete with coverart!) can be found here](http://pastel-clark.tumblr.com/post/167932914887/lions-a-spilling-like-an-overflowing-sink), or you can jump to the playlist directly on [Spotify](https://open.spotify.com/user/pastel-clark/playlist/7bYsF3hX5cpT4hdjEP0fuz) or [Youtube](https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLYyikp8pvXECf_8NqXPCpTnJXB4m1LzyJ).

 After everything—that exhausting, all-encompassing summer that had ended following Lance’s return home with a sparse few weeks of scorching, claiming sun, the crisp freshness of coastal air, and continuing reconciliation with Hunk—returning to Greenwood feels severely underwhelming.

 

Perhaps it’s simply that many of the fears Lance held approaching the place the first time around are now largely void. He knows this place, lent a kind of familiarity to it in one year living there that he never experienced with his multiple years at his former schools. Knows who to avoid, who can be trusted, what to do and what to say. His position there is secure enough that he doesn’t have to experience a daily fear of being one step away from losing it all—so long as he keeps his shit together, at least—and that’s all Lance ever wanted, really.

 

And so, when his family departs with considerable noise, but still substantially less fanfare than last year, he feels fairly at ease as he helps Hunk unpack the remainder of their stuff.

 

About twenty minutes in, as Lance is balanced precariously on the head of his bed and attempting to restring last year’s not-strictly-legal Christmas lights, Ritzie bursts in without warning. The door rattles as she kicks it open, and Lance, startled, yelps and falls backward onto his bed, casting a despairing look at the ceiling as the Christmas lights follow him down and land heavily on his stomach.

 

“I hate men!” Ritzie announces sullenly, and then collapses in a pouting heap on the ground, limbs splayed to the ceiling dispassionately. After a moment, Yuu follows in, casting her a tiredly concerned look as he steps over her legs and takes a seat on the end of Hunk’s bed, crossing his legs beneath him.

 

“All your friends are men,” Yuu points out, staring down at her, and she sticks out her tongue.

 

“Fine, I hate _white_ men.”

 

“Ritzie…” Hunk puts down the clothes he was sorting, and turning to her as if with the solemn bringing of shocking news. “ _You’re_ white.”

 

“ _Jewish,_ ” she corrects with a hiss, pointing a finger in the air imperiously, and Hunk squints.

 

Lance snorts, rolling over and pushing the Christmas lights to the side. Planting his chin in his hands and his elbows on the bed, he opts to take pity on her and ask, “What happened?”

 

Ritzie moans in defeat, and waves the hand still in the air. “We shan’t speak of it. It was too horrible.”

 

“Ritzie—“

 

“ _Shan’t_.”

 

Lance sighs.

 

“She got snapped at,” Yuu says, ignoring Ritzie’s squawk of protest. “That guy who was on our floor last year, Travis?”

 

“The one who called me—what was it— _‘a Mexican’_?” Lance rolls his eyes. A year of continued observation—not exactly desired but inevitable due to shared classes—had assured him that Travis’s specialty in cultural insensitivity and general assholishness extended in basically all directions, various genders and ethnicities included. “Among other things. What’d he say to her?” He can’t exactly imagine Ritzie taking shit from _Travis_ of all people, so whatever words had been exchanged must have been pretty bad to affect her like this.

 

“He didn’t,” Yuu admits, scrunching up his nose in distaste. “Well, he was the cause of the whole thing, so I’m blaming him for this one, but—“ Ritzie whines, and Yuu pokes a foot gently into her side, prompting another displeased noise. “Anyways, he was picking on this year’s newest target, one of the new scholarship kids, because he’s uncreative. Ritzie stepped in, and the kid she was defending basically told her he didn’t need a uh—a society princess causing a scene by trying to speak for him.”

 

Lance hisses in a breath. “Yikes.”

 

“Yeah, it wasn’t…great.”

 

“You doing okay?” Lance asks Ritzie, casting her a sympathetic look, and she shifts enough on the floor to sit up, glaring at him.

 

“I’m fine.” Ritzie stands up, scowling as she casts them all a wary look. “I’m going to go unpack. Half my clothes are still in a box.” She trudges out of the room, and they all wince when the door slams pointedly behind her.

 

“…Is she actually okay?” Hunk asks after a long moment of awkward silence. “I know she likes to make dramatics of things but she seems like…genuinely upset. For Ritzie levels of upset, at least.”

 

Yuu groans in exhaustion, which seems to be the ongoing mood for all of them, Lance thinks. Falling backwards onto Hunk’s bed, Yuu shrugs, staring up at the ceiling miserably. “Who knows? Ritz’ likes to make out she’s all nails, but God knows she’s pretty sensitive at times. Especially about this sort of thing.”

 

“This happen a lot?” Lance asks, peering inquisitively at Yuu. If it does, it’s certainly not a trend he has really noticed. Most people seem fairly acclimatized to Ritzie’s meddling streak—begrudgingly accommodating if not grateful, at least.

 

“Occasionally?” Yuu makes an indecisive noise. “You know what she’s like. Can’t help but get involved in everything, regardless of whether she’s wanted or not. It’s a compulsion to be overly helpful, if anything, but to some people it’s annoying, or her personality just makes it come off as self-righteous despite being genuinely well meaning.” His head leans up enough to cast Lance a tired look. “Some people just want to fight their own battles, and she can’t get that when it applies to anyone but herself. And it doesn’t help the people she’s usually quickest to jump in and defend are scholarship kids, can’t exactly blame some for reacting badly. Pretty much everyone in that program isn’t exactly coming from the heights of financial luxury—though I suppose you guys would know that better than me,” he amends, an embarrassed flush scrawling across his cheeks.

 

Hunk offers him a wry look. “Yeah, probably.”

 

“But anyways,” Yuu continues, flopping back down and waving a hand in a move that’s so reminiscent of Ritzie herself not yet ten minutes ago that Lance has to stifle a probably situationally-inappropriate giggle. “Some kids in that situation, the last thing they want is someone else stepping in and causing a fuss, they just want to keep their heads down. Or worse, they don’t want _Ritzie_ specifically getting in the middle of things. Insult to injury, or something, I guess.”

 

There’s a pause, and Yuu sighs. “It’s not like I don’t get it, y’know? To them it’s like…how could a kid living in privilege—the literal granddaughter of the headmaster, at that—possibly relate to someone who’s clawed their way to get here? It just looks like a martyr complex gone bad.” Hunk makes a reluctant sound, and Yuu points a finger at him. “Don’t tell me you’ve never thought it.”

 

“Okay, yeah,” Hunk says, holding his hands up in surrender. “A couple times, when we didn’t know each other as well. But she’s just trying to help, I figured that one out a long time ago. Ritzie’s one of the most bullheadedly self-sacrificial people I know.” He casts Lance a significant look, and he doesn’t have to say anything for Lance to know the other bullheaded moron he’s referring to is probably Lance himself.

 

“Yeah, but not everyone’s going to get that, and they can’t really be expected to.” Yuu sits up, fiddling with the hem of his shirt uncomfortably. “And _she_ gets that, too. When she gets like this, she’s upset at herself, not mad at whoever told her to fuck off. She just needs some space to cool off and mope by herself for a while and then she’ll be fine.”

 

“Mmmm, if you say so,” Hunk murmurs, leaning up and stretching, and then grabbing the nearest box yet to be unpacked. “You’re the Ritzie expert.”

 

“Well,” Yuu stands up, going to join Hunk. “I’m probably banned from the room for a bit, so I’ll help.”

 

They both turn to Lance, giving him a pointed look, and he sighs, getting up to join them reluctantly.

 

After about fifteen moments of Lance awkwardly shuffling in place in-between helping unpack, and casting longing looks towards the door, Yuu knocks his shoulder against his own, offering him one of the patiently exhausted yet amused expressions he gets when dealing with Ritzie trying to do something particularly unadvisable. “You can go and check on her, you know.”

 

Lance squints at him suspiciously. “You’re the one who told us to leave her alone.”

 

“Yeah, but,” Yuu makes a face, shrugging a shoulder, “I did mostly mean me. Besides, if she’s going to talk to anyone right now, it’s you.”

 

“…Really?” Lance asks skeptically.

 

“You two have got that like—wonder twins junk going on. Ritzie and I have known each other so long, we practically treat each other like siblings, with all the annoyance and pushing at boundaries that comes with it. You treat her like a friend and that means a lot to her.”

 

Lance glances away from Yuu and to Hunk carefully, who gives him one of those looks that means he’s being an idiot again, like about Greenwood, like over the summer.

 

Well. Hunk’s never wrong.

 

“…Ok,” he relents, and bows out of the room as Yuu and Hunk resume their work, breaking into easy conversation about the robotics team’s possible plans for the year as he slips out the door and pulls it shut quietly behind him.

 

Lance slinks across the hall to Ritzie and Yuu’s room, knocking gently, and the door creaks open of its own accord when he touches it, apparently not shut properly to begin with. He casts a wary look into the suspiciously empty room as the door opens more and more of it to view, and after a moment steps in, glancing amongst the largely unpacked boxes and haphazardly shoved around furniture. “…Ritzie?”

 

There’s a crash of noise, and then Ritzie’s voice, sounding rather frazzled, rings out from the adjoining bathroom door. “In here!” Lance considers asking if she wants him to leave, but then she calls out “One second!” and he figures she can tell him to shove off to his face if she desires.

 

Instead, he opts for more awkward skulking around her room, carefully stepping over boxes and bags and random shoes, likely chucked in the car at the last minute, knowing both Ritzie and how Lance’s own packing tends to go. Picking up on the distinct lack of pet tanks, even amongst the clutter, he yells out back to the door. “What happened to those leopard geckos you stole from Jake Calhoun last year?”

 

“Oh them?” Ritzie calls back, voice markedly less shaky than before—a safe topic, then. “They’re at home. Somehow for the _one day_ Dad was actually home and not on a video conference or something, he still managed to find them after not noticing the tank in the spare room for the whole damn summer. Wouldn’t let me take them back to school.” She pauses. “I’ll give it a week and then sneak them back in somehow. The housekeeper won’t stop me, she hates them.”

 

“You’re terrible. A terrible, terrible rulebreaker,” Lance says, just loud enough for Ritzie to hear, and her muffled laughter rings through the door.

 

It’s all a diversion tactic, really, for both of them, but it’s nice. Hearing her laugh and not be upset like before is nice. Lance always feels like he has so little control in his life, an inability to do as much as he should and help as much as he would like—unable to help his family, incapable of healing Mavis, of fixing himself.

 

Always, _always,_ unable to bring Loraine back to them—unable to save her, unable to _be_ her.

 

Comparatively, helping Ritzie should be easy.

 

It is. It isn’t. It’s neither. It’s both. Somehow. Like Loraine, and the being and saving of her.

_Can’t save the dead,_ his heart whispers, and he hears Hunk on the beach again, for the millionth time over.

 

_You need to save everyone, to protect them, because you love them. You let them in, because you need them, but you also push them away when they get too close._

 

Can’t even save the living.

 

He walks echoing steps along Ritzie’s wall, tracing a hand along whitewashed, concrete-foundation walls, the kind you can’t push poster tacks or hooks into, the kind that can’t be marked or damaged. Instead, they tape up pictures and string lights along windowsills to make homes out of a place that will bear no marking or memory of them once they’re gone.

 

His fingers still along the edge of the school-installed shelf, the one every room gets on each opposite wall. Ritzie has already started unpacking here, in the most backwards of functions given most of her clothes are still in boxes, knick-knacks and debate trophies and small ornaments he’s seen her pick up at touristy junk shops crowding the surface. On the edge, there’s a photo of a younger Ritzie and two men he assumes are her dads, all crowded together outside a building somewhere in a traditionally cheesy family photo. Ritzie’s hair is a puff around her head, not even long enough to pull into the smallest of pigtails or braids yet, and her dads have their arms around each other, a hand each on her shoulders.

 

They look nothing like her in the slightest. They look like a family.

 

“Oh look,” Ritzie says with a snort behind him, and Lance starts as her arms loop around his waist and her chin drops onto his shoulder. He hadn’t even heard her come out of the bathroom, too wrapped up in both their pasts. “They were married once. Who’d have thought?”

 

Lance puts his own hands on her forearms, and says nothing. He doesn’t know this territory.

 

“That was the day they took me home properly, y’know,” Ritzie says conversationally, voice dull. Her hair tickles his chin and the edge of her glasses digs into his neck. He leans his head more firmly against her own, regardless. “Day they adopted me. I was…” She scrunches up her nose. “Eight? Eight. They were my foster parents first, got me just after I turned seven, so it wasn’t like we didn’t already have pictures, but…” A chuckle. “They wanted it to be special, I guess? First photo after it was all official. Once we were a definite family. No maybes, no take backs. Maybe they just knew I needed that.”

 

“You look happy,” Lance offers, and Ritzie huffs.

 

“Yeah.” She frowns, just slightly, and Lance can feel the corner of it against his skin. “They got divorced not long after that, it felt like. I mean it was—it was three whole years—but _God_ it didn’t feel like it. And then it was just…over. Looking back, I was probably the only thing holding them together, at that point. They’d always been separating, but they just didn’t realize it for a long time. Neither did I.”

 

Lance looks down and studies their hands, just next to each other. Ritzie is taller, but her hands are just slightly smaller than his, fine-boned and calloused and skin paper-thin pale next to his own. She is an ice sculpture, immovable, impenetrable. She is glass, easily broken. “Does it still hurt?”

 

Ritzie’s head turns, and her laugh tickles the back of his neck. “Most things don’t stop hurting, Lance.”

 

“I know,” Lance says, and he does. God, he does.

 

“…I don’t know,” she answers after a moment, soft but still firm in her decision, still Ritzie. “I guess? Sometimes. They’re happier now, and my step-dad—my papa’s husband—he’s nice, and they still…they still love me. Even if they don’t love each other, they still love me. I know that. And hey, two birthday parties, right? What could be better?”

 

Her voice is flat, and Lance closes his eyes. “You’re allowed to be upset. It’s ok to be upset about things that won’t change.” God knows he is.

 

She sighs out against his shoulder. “But I’m not sure if I am, at least as much as I used to be. It doesn’t _not_ hurt, but it’s number, now.”

 

He tries to imagine the pain of Loraine going numb, of it fading. He can’t. He’s not sure he wants to. It has settled, but it has never, never become lesser.

 

He thinks he’d rather die, than face that day when it _is_ lesser, despite how much easier it would be.

 

“I guess I just wish they were around more,” Ritzie murmurs, and Lance thinks of Mavis. “They’re always—“ She makes a frustrated noise. “Never mind.”

 

There’s a pause, and then she says, “I didn’t mean what I said earlier.”

 

“I know.”

 

“I was just—upset. Before my dads, there were mostly just group homes, everyone always clashing or sticking together. I guess I kind of stayed used to that, even after. When it was just me, in this new school on my own, and then just me and Yuu, the one other kid who didn’t have anyone, on our own together.”

 

Ritzie: the princess, the protector. Ritzie: the faceless, the friendless.

 

Ritzie: the child hanging off the tree, reaching out, seeking. Yuu: the child on the ground, looking, searching.

 

A park in Maryland, a private school in Virginia—what’s the difference, really, Lance wonders, when it comes to lonely children.

 

Except— _he_ hadn’t been lonely, really. Not when he had his sisters, not when he had Loraine.

 

But then Loraine had been gone, and Mavis had been the next best anchor, but was away, always, even when she was there. Just like Ritzie and her dads.

 

“What that kid said to you…” Lance says, and Ritzie tenses slightly against his back. “Do you want to talk about it?”

 

“Not really.”

“Ok,” he says, and Ritzie presses a smile against the back of his neck. Lance finds her hands with his own, squeezes. “Ok.”

 

“Thank you.”

 

“…I think I saw Calhoun bringing a turtle in earlier,” Lance mumbles after a long moment, a peace offering. “Do you want to go and rescue it before he inevitably kills it?”

 

Her smile curves into a grin, upturned lips warm against his skin.

 

“Please.”

 

 

xxx

 

 

At the end of a weekend in early November, with rain pounding outside amongst air so humid it feels heavy, Lance sits on the train back to D.C. from Veradera, watching the brewing storm from the window, wondering idly if it will turn into one of the thunderstorms that more usually characterize summers.

 

He likes thunderstorms, remembers August afternoons spent running out into the tempest with Loraine and his other sisters, dancing through forming puddles and letting the rain and wind ruin their hair as their mother screamed at them to come inside before they tempted fate and ended up being the unlucky idiots who got hit by lightning. Evie would recount statistics of lightning strikes, shark attacks, car crashes, every _you’re more likely to_ as she would carefully place a palm out into the rain by their mother’s side, the only one who knew the unlikely odds, yet feared the chances more than the rest of them, Lance and the others contented to the risk in exchange for the joy.

 

Beside Lance, Hunk is silent, and that steals more of his attention than even the storm.

 

He had thought they had reached a new stability, after the summer. It’s not perfect, and Lance fucks it up more than he gets it right—like anything—but he _tries_ , he tries to be more open, to not shut Hunk out when he feels himself slipping, and he knows that’s all Hunk was looking for, really—a token of effort, a bit more consistency in Lance’s treatment of him.

 

It is better. It _feels_ better, than before. Not perfection, but honesty, human and flawed, there to be seen and heard.

 

And in turn he has felt Hunk try to be more understanding of Lance’s other forms of support, quieter on the afternoons Mavis calls, giving him the space he needs.

 

Which is why this past weekend—which took a turn from a friendly goodbye on Friday night when Hunk opted to go home with his grandmother to two days of Hunk straight up vanishing, rounded out by an awkwardly silent car ride and wait to board the train—is somewhat of an aberration.

 

Ok no, very much of an aberration.

 

And the thing is, Lance can’t figure out _why_. As far as he can tell, he’s done nothing to promote the return of Hunk’s silent treatment—and while Lance will fully acknowledge he has vast capabilities to be a dick, he’d like to think he’s at least self-aware enough to _realize_ when he’s being a dick.

 

In truth, the longer Hunk remains silent, and the longer Lance racks his brain while tracing raindrops on the window, the more he begins to wonder if it does have anything to do with him at all. While Hunk hasn’t really been looking at him, it hasn’t seemed pointed, and the few times their eyes have met, Lance hasn’t detected the quiet fury he usually feels radiating off of Hunk when he’s truly angry at him, but just…distraction, lack of focus.

 

Hunk’s mind is somewhere else, as out of tune with his surroundings as Lance had been in Ritzie’s bedroom when he’d stood thinking of things that once were, and Lance frankly has no idea as to what holds his attention so drastically, except that it may not in fact be concerned with Lance himself.

 

Shocking, he knows, but he’d _also_ like to think he took the portion of Hunk’s lecture about how his life doesn’t revolve around Lance to heart along with the rest of it.

 

Which really only leaves the question of what non-Lance-related puzzle has Hunk so wrapped up.

 

Next to him, Hunk shifts, pulling an envelope with a clumsily shredded top and loopy handwriting on the front out of his bag and turning it over again and again in his hands. It’s a repetitive motion he’s already done a couple times during the train ride, before tucking the envelope back into his bag until the next time he draws it out and does it all over again. Lance is drawn to it, watching Hunk’s large hands handle the envelope with the kind of dedicated fragility given to something revered, or something feared.

 

Stealing one quick glance at Evie in the aisle seat, who is still conveniently focused on her laptop, thick eyebrows lowered and glaring at the screen, Lance leans out and carefully taps the edge of the envelope. Startled, Hunk retracts it instantly, clutching it to his chest as if he instinctively expects it to be stolen away, and blinks, turning to Lance.

 

“You alright?” Lance asks quietly, and Hunk quirks a false smile far too easily, leaving Lance wondering when he learned to do so well what Lance does all the time.

 

“Fine.”

 

“…Uhuh.” Lance glances down at the envelope pointedly, and Hunk’s hands around it twitch nervously. “Look, you know I’m not going to make you talk about whatever’s going on, but…”

 

Hunk winces, eyes lowering to the envelope. “That obvious, huh?” He looks back up to Lance’s deadpan stare, and snorts. “Ok, yeah, fair.” Eyes flickering to Evie’s profile next to him, Hunk shakes his head and mutters under his breath, “I’ll tell you about it later, not here.”

 

Lance casts a questioning glance around the half-empty train car, and then looks pointedly to Evie’s headphones fit snugly over her ears. “Hey Evie, Karen was the one who broke your DS when you were eighteen.” Evie doesn’t even glance up, completely unawares of anything he’s saying, and Lance turns back to Hunk, who rolls his eyes.

 

“Ha-ha. Very funny.”

 

“Hey I’m just saying in terms of privacy, this isn’t actually that bad.”

 

“Yeah, but—“ Hunk leans forward. “It’s about—it’s about my mom, ok?” he hisses under his breath, and Lance jerks in surprise.

 

“Your mom?” he asks, and Hunk just nods jerkily.

 

“ _Yeah._ ”

 

“Oh,” Lance mumbles, and nods in turn, sitting back. “Ok.”

 

Hunk says nothing, falling back to his pattern with the envelope, turning it over and over again, fingers shaky as they skate around thin pencil lines to avoid smudging the writing, and Lance is left to wonder at exactly what secrets it contains. Is it a letter from her, a letter about her?

 

Lance has never met Awhina Garrett, the highflying woman who could never ground herself enough to be a caretaker. He’s seen pictures, old things depicting times long before, shoved up onto the fireplace mantle in Hunk’s home. She is mythic in that house, and in Lance’s own for that matter, unspoken of beyond the occasional whisper of a story from Hunk’s grandmother. It is not that she is a disgraced topic, or something uncouth to breathe mention of, but more that she is simply…not present. She has not been a part of Hunk’s life for a very long time, and never part of _their_ lives, part of Veradera.

 

What could she even have to say, to the son who barely knows her?

 

Obviously, whatever it was, it was enough to rattle Hunk.

 

The silence between them lingers the rest of the train ride back to school, eyes largely not meeting save for conspicuously shared glances of waiting tension as Evie tiredly drags them out of their train and onto the local Metrorail one with the stop that puts them closest to Greenwood’s front gates. She waves them off distractedly, already answering a call from their grandfather about a _sudden_ and _immediate_ problem with the television he wants her to _resolve right now, please_.

 

They walk up the front steps of their dorm to the tune of Evie loudly explaining that _no, Abuelito, she can’t fix the T.V. with the remote power of her mind because shockingly even she isn’t that good_ , and Lance has to stifle a grin even with Hunk shifting anxiously next to him.

 

He calls out his goodbye cheerfully, and Evie makes a face at him as she holds the phone out away from her ear enough that their grandfather’s confused bellowing won’t blow her eardrum.

 

Once they get up to their room, Hunk makes a beeline for his bed, flopping onto it gratefully, and Lance leans heavily against the door after he shuts it, eyeing Hunk speculatively as his friend makes exhausted sounds and rolls around onto his back, already fishing the letter out of his hoodie pocket. “So. Your mom, huh?”

 

Hunk heaves a heavy sigh. “Yep.”

 

Lance thinks back to the weekend’s lack of Hunk’s presence, and almost without thought slides to the ground, back resting against the door. “Was she here this weekend?”

 

Hunk blinks, and shakes his head, face furrowing into contemplation. “No, but uh—“ He stops, considering. “She’s been…around.”

 

“Around?”

 

“Earlier this week,” Hunk says, pushing himself up enough to sit back against the headboard. “Just a couple of days. Don’t know if she did that on purpose. She and Nana write, sometimes. When Nana has an address, at least. I guess she’d probably know I’m at boarding school by now, when I’d be home and when I wouldn’t be. Maybe.” He grimaces. “Maybe they don’t talk about me at all.”

 

Lance just crosses his arms over his knees, leans forward and rests his chin onto them, eyes trained to the floor. There is no easy answer here. Either Hunk’s mother knew his life’s schedule, and chose to come on days when he wouldn’t be present. Or she didn’t, which leaves the implication that she never asks about him at all. He honestly can’t say which would be more disappointing, or more comforting to Hunk—that his mother may have avoided him, or that she does not think of him.

 

Despite the close intimacy they share compared to their other friends, even they have things they do not speak of, unless in desperation. Lance’s hair—the incident that put him down this road to begin with. Loraine, sometimes, and what she meant to both of them.

 

Hunk’s mother—she, too, is one of the things they do not ask each other unprompted.

 

Lance was shared the story—or lack of it—for her…her _un-presence_ in Hunk’s life in confidence when they were younger. Of how Hunk has that parental gap he doesn’t quite know if he even misses, when he never had something to begin to miss in the first place. Beyond that, it was something rarely mentioned between the two of them, it just was. Is.

 

Some things, for better or worse, are immovable.

 

Lance’s life will not resolve itself with waiting. Ritzie’s parents will not suddenly reconcile. Hunk’s mother will not come home to him.

 

“What happened?” he asks, rather than offer comfort. Hunk’s shoulders slump in subtle relief, and Lance decides he made the right call.

 

“She’s apparently on one of her ‘clean up the act and all loose ends’ kicks,” Hunk says softly, looking down to the envelope sitting in his lap. “Nana says they work, sometimes. For a little while.”

 

“…What happened, Hunk?”

 

“I don’t—“ Hunk makes a frustrated sound, curling up on himself. “It’s not like I’m angry, really. Though maybe I’m supposed to be. She just…was never the sort of person meant to be a mother. Anyone’s mother, not just mine. That’s not—I _know_ that’s not my fault, it might not even be hers, but—“

 

“It hurts?” Lance guesses, thinking of Ritzie, and Hunk looks up, smile tenuous and grateful, even with watery eyes.

 

“Yeah.”

 

And then the tears spill over.

 

Lance moves on instinct, crossing the room to Hunk’s bed and sitting across from him. He looks around for a tissue for all of half a second, before promptly giving up and opting to pull his jacket sleeve over his hand and use it to dab ineffectively at Hunk’s face. Hunk makes an embarrassed noise, hands reaching up to try and push Lance’s hand away and wipe at his face himself, and Lance gently slaps them away with his spare hand until Hunk huffs in resignation and gives up. He looks mostly tiredly amused by the time Lance is done.

 

“Crybaby,” Lance mutters halfheartedly as he withdraws his hand, not meaning it in the slightest, and Hunk’s patient look indicates he knows Lance doesn’t mean it either. “Your skin always gets so blotchy.”

 

“Yes, because I’m really worried about that, Lance,” Hunk says dryly, even as he sniffles one last time and wipes his nose with the back of his hand, making a face. “Where’s the tissue box?”

 

“No idea.” Rummaging around in his jacket pockets, Lance finally turns up an old napkin he thinks he stole from the school cafeteria last week, and offers it to Hunk. Despite the suspicious look he gives it, Hunk accepts, wiping his hand and then wiping again at his face. Glancing down at the envelope still sitting between them, Lance draws in a deep breath. “Look, whatever your mom wrote—“

 

“My mom didn’t write that,” Hunk mumbles, scrubbing the napkin over his nose and eyes one last time and then balling it up in his hands, placing them back in his lap and reaching out one finger to tap the edge of the letter apprehensively. “It was—my—“ He sighs. “My dad did.”

 

Lance blinks. And then blinks again. Confusion wells up, and he stares at Hunk blankly.

 

One of the things Lance has always known with complete certainty in life is that Hunk doesn’t _have_ a dad, at least not one he can put name and face to. There had only been Hunk’s mother, the unavailable, the unobtainable, and his grandmother, the homemaker, the caretaker. The technical family tree made up of the woman who birthed him, and the woman who raised him, none other.

 

“Your dad?”

Hunk sucks in a breath. “Yep.”

 

“But I thought—“ Lance wavers. “ _How?_ ”

 

“Apparently part of the whole tying up loose ends thing meant visiting some old haunts,” Hunk says, with a kind of self-deprecating laugh, and Lance isn’t quite sure why. “She ran into an old flame, they caught up, and I guess somewhere along the way she decided it might be worth mentioning she had a kid that was half his.”

 

“Jesus,” Lance says faintly, and somewhere in the back of his mind he can hear his own mother—or Marcie, maybe—making a scandalized noise at his language choice. “And she’s uh…sure?”

 

“As sure as it’d ever be without a test.” Hunk shrugs. “She never stayed with anyone for long, but she never saw more than one person at once. Even I know that much, from her and Nana’s old letters and stuff.” He hums halfheartedly, a low, conflicted sound, eyes dropping again to the letter. “…She never told him, before. Just left when it was time for her to float off somewhere new. I have no idea why she brought it up now of all times, or if she even expressly did and he just did the math with my age o-or something and asked her but—“ Hunk glances up, staring at Lance with solemnity, and more than a hint of panic. “He is. He’s my dad.”

 

“He’s your dad,” Lance repeats with as much breathless awe as Hunk, and now his friend looks even more terrified, as if Lance’s speaking it somehow made it that much more real. He looks down to the letter once more in time with Hunk, and suddenly the way Hunk so reverently handled it, and the weight of it, metaphorically speaking, makes sense. “…Where? Where is he, I mean?”

 

New Zealand. Australia, maybe. The U.S.? Where else had Hunk’s mother been?

 

“You won’t believe it,” Hunk says, and when Lance looks to him, raising an eyebrow, Hunk giggles, suddenly seeming giddily overwhelmed. “Samoa.”

 

“…Samoa.”

 

Hunk nods frantically, eyes wide and excited. “Samoa. The uh—the independent state, not the American territory portion.”

 

“Why the hell was your mom in Samoa?” Lance asks, and suddenly he’s laughing too, stifling helpless snorts into his hands because this conversation was so entirely not what he had expected, and _God_ —Hunk has a father, a father in Samoa. A father with a name and an address and—and—all the proof of a living and being of a person.

 

“I don’t know!” Hunk answers, throwing his hands up before he has to quickly pull them down again to muffle his own laughter. “She just—she just was!”

 

“I guess, geographically, it’s sort of logical.” Lance says, as the last of his giggles die down. “Especially if she was island-hopping around that part of the Pacific.”

 

“Who knows with my mother, honestly,” Hunk says, sounding mystified but not particularly upset, and Lance feels glad Hunk seems to be more at ease, at least until he looks back to the letter, and his shoulders slump slightly. A more serious expression sets on Hunk’s face, and he doesn’t look upset, really, so much as just very…contemplative. “He wrote this, for my mom to give to me. He wants—he wants to meet me. At Christmas, or the summer, whenever I’m comfortable. He—“

 

Hunk hesitates, and Lance leans forward, offering his hand to Hunk as an anchor. He takes it, smile grateful, and Lance intertwines their fingers as he taps Hunk’s name on the envelope carefully with his other hand. “Do you want to meet him?”

 

“I—“ Hunk’s face cracks, uncertain and frightened. “I don’t know? For so long when I was younger, littler but old enough to understand, all I wanted was to—to _know_. And then I accepted I never would, and now…” Hunk’s voice cracks, and his spare hand grabs at the forgotten napkin to scrunch and twist between his fingers anxiously. “What if it goes wrong? What if—what if he doesn’t like me?” he finishes, voice small.

 

“Hunk,” Lance says firmly. “Of _course_ he’ll like you.”

 

“My mom doesn’t like me,” Hunk whispers.

 

“No,” Lance says, reaching up to touch Hunk’s chin and gently raise his face upward so that they can look eye to eye. He knows enough about running away from things, about the times Hunk has had to confront him and force him to see his own hypocrisy. It’s time he did the same. “Your mom doesn’t want to be a parent. You said it yourself. It’s not about what you can and can’t be for her, it’s about what _she_ can and can’t be, and therefore not your fault.” He smiles as gently as he can manage. “You’re always there to tell me when I’m being an idiot, so now I’m returning the favor. You have no duty to your dad, blood doesn’t create a relationship, and if you don’t want to meet him you don’t have to. But don’t run away because you think he might not want to know you when he’s already indicated he does, otherwise you’re being just as dumb as I am whenever _I_ panic and push people away.”

 

Hunk sniffs, and is back to wiping ineffectually at his eyes with the napkin. “Don’t compare my biggest moment of crisis in my life to your—your repetitive cycles of ‘ _I must solve everything myself_ ’ self-sacrificing nonsense.”

 

“You’re welcome,” Lance says, grinning, and Hunk throws the napkin at him, the crumpled paper batting softly off his nose.

 

“…I just don’t know what I want,” Hunk admits softly after a long moment. “I never even thought this would be an option, you know?”

 

Lance thinks of all the unfixable things that haunt him, that drive him. What he would do, if he had an option to suddenly change it all. At first instinct, it seems easy. Bring Loraine back, repair his family, make himself… _himself_ again. But it’s not that easy, really. If he could reverse the last year and a half…he’d lose Mavis all over again, would have never met Ritzie.

 

They’re not equivalent to Loraine in any way, shape, or form, but in the same sense she isn’t—she isn’t equivalent to _them_. You can’t trade away one person for another, balance out the equation and decide who’s worth more. Loraine was—is—everything, but Mavis, his friends…they’re important too. He wants Loraine back more than anything in the world, but he wants so many things. Wants his family to be ok again, wants his mother to have never been sick, wants Mavis to have never left, but sometimes bad things just…happen.                    

 

And would he even know how to be her Lance again, if the world reset and he could have everything back?

 

“Yeah,” he says to Hunk eventually, shrugging tiredly. “I know.”

 

“…What would you do?” Hunk asks, and Lance snorts.

 

“I don’t know if I’m the right person to ask, my dad was dead long before I was around.” Hunk makes a face at him, and Lance sighs. “I don’t know either, ok? Sometimes family isn’t what you expect it to be…for better or for worse.” He hesitates, and then grabs the envelope, picking it up and turning it to face Hunk. “It’s your decision to make, and it’s not like you have to do it now. But you have a chance, and if you want this, then don’t give it up and regret it down the line.”

 

So many unchangeable things happen, to all of them, but one of the few things Lance feels like he’s learned—with every fuckup and face slap and New York city street—is that you can’t run away from change, either. To hold onto his past, to Loraine, and to survive, he must change. Otherwise he’ll never reach the Garrison. Never reach her stars, his stars, their stars.

 

The unfixable is immovable, but change is also inevitable.

 

“If you want to know your dad, Hunk,” Lance says quietly, “Don’t let fear keep you from family.”

 

“You’re one to talk,” Hunk snorts unthinkingly, and Lance winces, glad Hunk doesn’t notice when he does. His family issues aren’t the ones on the table, right now. “I— yeah. Ok,” Hunk says, and when he squeezes Lance’s hand, Lance squeezes back.

 

“Ok,” he breathes. “Good.”

 

                                                                                                                          

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Kudos to my friend Katie for the "oh look they were married once" line which I literally stole from a much more lighthearted conversation we had. She kindly let me be a Sentence Thief. 
> 
> Feel free to come talk to me about Lance, his boyfriend Keith, Voltron, or whatever over on on tumblr [here](http://pastel-clark.tumblr.com/) . Or, come yell with me on [Twitter!](https://twitter.com/hpClarkster)

**Author's Note:**

> Buckle in folks it's Suffering time.
> 
>  
> 
> Tumblr: [pastel-clark](http://pastel-clark.tumblr.com/)
> 
> Twitter: [hpClarkster](https://twitter.com/hpClarkster)
> 
>  
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> 
> [_Spilling Like An Overflowing Sink_ Tumblr Masterpost](http://pastel-clark.tumblr.com/post/162766132667/the-spilling-like-an-overflowing-sink)


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